Hello!
I try to keep this newsletter to sharing thoughts and ideas but today I do have an ask : Vote for my session for SXSW 2026 and send me to Austin next March!
My panel You, Reorged: The Future of Marketing Careers, featuring Kimberly Storin (CMO, Zoom), Rohan Gupta (Principal, Deloitte Consulting), and Debbie Woloshin (CMO, Stitch Fix) is in the running for SXSW 2026!
For most of my career, I’ve worked at the intersection of organizational, business, and individual change and I’ve been fascinated by how entire functions and professions emerge, adapt, and evolve. With AI and market forces reshaping the workforce faster than ever, the marketing profession is entering a defining moment.
In this session, we’ll explore what these shifts mean for career paths, skills, and opportunities, with insights from leaders at some of today’s most innovative brands. We’ll also explore how AI is reshaping marketing careers, from new hybrid roles to the skills you’ll need to thrive in a changing profession. Voting is open until August 24 cast your vote here. Thank you for your support!
The Perils of Leading with Yesterday’s Map
For most of my career, I’ve worked at the intersection of organizational, industry, and individual change. And while it may sound cliché, we’re in a moment of unprecedented instability and transformation. Artificial intelligence, automation, and shifting expectations about how, where, and why we work are reshaping the workplace at a speed we’ve rarely seen before.
Yet when I look at how many companies are responding, I keep noticing the same pattern: leaders are trying to navigate these changes with old playbooks, maps and tools, approaches designed for a different time and a different reality.
This “old map” problem surfaces in many ways, but two recent examples stand out: the debate over the future of early career jobs, and a internal company wide memo from AT&T’s CEO about culture and RTO policies. Both reveal the risk of using outdated playbooks to address challenges that demand fundamentally new ways of thinking.
Early Career Jobs and the AI Effect
Recently, a wave of articles (this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one as examples) has warned about the potential wipeout of early career jobs in many industries as a result of artificial intelligence. The logic is: as AI models and tools, especially large language models (LLMs) and other machine learning tools, get better and potentially eventually learn how to learn, many of the tasks that used to be assigned to entry level workers can now be automated.
Anecdotally, we’re already seeing signs of this in software engineering. In AI-first startups and even at some large tech companies, artificial intelligence/machine learning and automation is now handling work that would have previously gone to junior engineers. Given how fast AI capabilities are advancing, it’s not a stretch to imagine this happening in some other disciplines.
Adjacent (but perhaps, hard to correlate/infer) Unemployment is rising among 20–24-year-olds, including many with college degrees. And anecdotally, if you talk to job seekers who are early career professionals many will tell you about how hard it is to land a job right now. To be fair, it’s not just them, finding work feels harder for a lot of people right now but the challenge for new grads is acute.
In response, some leaders and commentators are calling for ways to “save” early career jobs. I understand the instinct, there is real value in helping young professionals build skills, networks, and career momentum. But I’d argue that “saving” them, at least in the form they’ve traditionally taken, might not be the right goal to go after.
I would argue that we’ve actually never (collectively) been that we were never that great at designing entry level jobs in the first place. In my experience, I have absolutely met individuals who had a positive and supportive early career onboarding experience. But I’d argue for many, we’ve fallen short, missed the mark, and in many cases, paid the price in terms of disengagement, no engagement, lost productivity or turnover, not to mention, not actually actualizing on the talents and skills we hired them for. But for many, they were repetitive, low-value, and disconnected from learning opportunities.
So, if AI can automate away work that didn’t deliver much value to the business or the worker, maybe that’s not a loss. The real question is: what should early career roles look like now?
I see three better questions for leaders:
If a task can be done entirely by a machine, do we actually need to do it at all?
Just because a machine can do it, should they?
If we do need to do it, should humans still be the ones doing it, and if so, can we redesign the role so that it develops capability and delivers business value?
Yes, it’s true that entry-level workers often lack the experience, sets and reps, and context for more advanced work. But it’s also true that we rarely give them enough opportunity, trust, or scope to stretch into it. This is where old thinking or relying on old maps comes into play - Outsourcing functions or roles offshore, nearshore or elsewhere worked, until we realized we no longer had that capability. Eliminating early career pathways writ large might mean we don’t have a pipeline of skilled talent coming into the company.
This to me, illustrates the outdated mindset and thinking that many leaders are applying to this changing world of work. Instead of relying on the tried and true playbook, reimagining how to leverage early career workers in new and different ways is to me, the better opportunity in this moment in time.
The AT&T Memo and the Return-to-Office Debate
Another example of old maps meeting a new world came from AT&T CEO John Stankey, who recently sent a memo to employees outlining expectations for culture and collaboration in response to an employee engagement survey where engagement and commitment levels were dipping. Part of this was tied to the company’s decision to move from three days in the office to five, but it also touched on the pace of change in a demanding business, and a shift from a company rooted in tenure and loyalty to a “market based culture” focused on rewarding “, Capability, contribution, and commitment”
In the memo, Stankey emphasized the importance of in-person work, collaboration, and Employees who are unwilling to comply were firmly advised to reconsider their future at the company. I'll give him credit for being transparent. Many leaders hide behind euphemisms or leave these expectations unspoken. Instead, Stankey said the quiet part out loud.
But here’s the problem: the playbook he’s using is straight out of a command-and-control era. Mandating physical presence, tying career progression to office attendance, and setting one-size-fits all rules might have been effective in a pre-pandemic, less flexible workplace. Today, it feels like trying to force fit a square peg into a round hole. The challenges of building culture, fostering innovation, and developing talent in a hybrid or remote context are real,but they require a different toolkit.
This is not to minimize the difficulty of the task. When you’re the CEO of a century-old company with a massive workforce (AT&T is around for 140 years and now 100,00 employees) shifting course is hard. You’re dealing with ingrained culture, investor pressures, and operational complexity. But that’s exactly why new maps are needed. The forces reshaping work today are not the same ones leaders faced in the past. Treating them as if they are leads to solutions that don’t stick.
You Can’t Use an Old Map to Explore a New World
In both cases, the early career job debate and AT&T’s cultural stance, the underlying issue is the same: trying to solve new problems with old thinking. One of my favorite quotes I use in my keynotes comes from Albert Einstein who famously said, “You cannot use an old map to explore a new world.”
Old maps are comforting because they’re familiar. They’ve worked before, they are models, playbooks and toolkits that we’re previously used, and in many cases, the leaders who are trying to use them again were once rewarded for using them. But when things change, when technology fundamentally starts to reshape what work looks like, when global macroeconomic shifts, demographic shifts, or governmental policy shifts necessitate re-examining business strategy, clinging to the old map doesn't get you where you need to go. In fact, it can keep you stuck in place while the world moves on.
A new map doesn’t mean throwing away everything you’ve done before. It means:
Seeing differently: Question your assumptions about what’s “always” been true.
Thinking differently: Explore what AI and other changes make possible that wasn’t before.
Doing differently: Experiment with new role designs, talent pathways, and cultural norms.
We’re in a new world of work that demands new ways of thinking and doing. Ironically, the people best positioned to help us adapt are often the least empowered to do so: early career workers.
Unlike those of us with years of experience, they aren’t weighed down by ingrained ways of working and organizational debt: the biases, legacy processes, and bad habits we’ve accumulated over time. They don’t have ingrained beliefs about “how things are done here,” which means they can approach challenges with curiosity and openness.
And let’s be honest: the workplace today isn’t perfect. It’s not like things are amazing with the way we conduct work today. Instead of removing new ways of thinking or trying to fix something that was broken to begin with, perhaps honing in on new ways of thinking and working in this new world is what we need.
Not all of us are the CEO of AT&T, or deciding the fate of early career roles. But all of us can create our own version of a new map in our corner of the workplace. To start, here are some questions to consider:
What assumptions am I holding about how work “should” be done that might no longer be true?
Where am I convinced I’m right, but could benefit from an outside perspective to see it differently?
If I could eliminate or retire one thing, a process, program, or initiative, what would it be, why that one, and what’s stopping me from doing it?
What’s a belief about my work or career that once served me well but may no longer fit the world I’m working in today?
The answers to these questions are your starting point. They’re how each of us begins to sketch a new map, not just for our own success, but for the kind of workplace we want to help build.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter and found it valuable and would like to work together, here are three ways. If you’re looking for some help for your learning and development, leadership development, I’d love to work with you: Here is how I might be able to assist:
Leadership & Learning Programs: Formal training and leadership development in your company, such as new manager or new leader training, or skill-based programs. (See Here for more details)
Keynote Speaking - Do you have a conference, offsite, or event and in need of a speaker? I’d love to hear more and see how I can assist
1:1 Executive Coaching - Are you looking for an executive coach for 1:1 leadership support? Let’s chat about how we can work together
Feel free to contact me directly for more details!