Return to Office is BS

Is the return-to-office push a brilliant comeback or just corporate slapstick? In this no-holds-barred episode, Dr. Jessica Kriegel, Culture Partners’ Chief Strategy Officer, joins Chad & Cheese to clown on outdated work policies, Gen Z’s “work-from-bed” ethos, and why mandating face time might just be a diversity disaster.

From C-suite vs. HR showdowns to CEOs bailing faster than bad stand-up acts, Dr. Kriegel breaks down why clinging to pre-pandemic work culture is like dancing with a mop. Plus, we’re serving hot takes on remote work tech, corporate silos, and why upskilling is the only way to avoid being the layoff punchline.

💥 Tune in now—before your boss drags you back to 2019!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel (00:30.963)

Yeah, this is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Dr. Jessica Kriegel. She's the chief strategy officer at Culture Partners. Dr. Jessica Kriegel, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

Chad (00:37.671)

Hello.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (00:48.696)

Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. It's dangerous.

Joel (00:53.011)

Yes, you've never heard our show, so I pray for you that you'll be able to make it through the end. But aside from never having heard our show before, what else should our listeners know about Dr. Jessica?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (00:58.446)

Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (01:06.094)

cold intro. You've never heard our show. What else should they know? Well, thank you. Thank you. The danger has begun. I am, you guys fed me some lines about my intro. You were like, just tell them that you love jazz music and long walks on the beach. I love neither jazz music nor long walks on the beach.

Chad (01:09.373)

Hahaha

Joel (01:11.377)

We come to play, baby. We come to play. know you do too. So let's rock.

Chad (01:32.617)

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (01:33.45)

I'm a keynote speaker. That's my thing. So I have a podcast of my own. It's a five minute daily podcast for CEOs kind of get their brief on what it is that they need to know. And I'm the chief strategy officer at Culture Partners. And we create clarity, alignment, and accountability around your purpose, strategy, and culture to get results. And Only Culture Partners does that. So there's my spiel.

Joel (01:53.453)

And I've never heard your podcast. So we are on equal footing. We're on equal footing. That's right. That's right. That's how I did. I I did my homework on this one. Let's, let's go right to the elephant in the room. we're here to talk about returned office. Jamie diamond CEO at JP Morgan, is in the news big time this week. Let's check out a clip of what he thinks about.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (01:57.07)

How dare you? How dare you? And mine's only five minutes long, so it really doesn't hurt.

Chad (01:58.281)

I know, I know. See, we really had no excuse,

Joel (02:20.452)

returned office or work from home, means to his business. And we'll get your opinion on the other side.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (04:05.198)

You

Joel (04:36.509)

Get off my lawn.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (04:40.366)

So bitter.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (04:48.184)

Wow, Jamie needs a nap, I think.

Joel (04:49.415)

All right. He needs a peri and a foot massage for sure. all right. All right, doctor. What do you think about Jamie's comments?

Chad (04:54.025)

needs more than that

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (05:00.526)

Well, there was two halves to that audio clip, right? I think the first half is total nonsense. In the second half, I agree with most of it actually. So I thought the ironic moment was when he said, that creates fucking rudeness. okay, like you right now, dude, is rudeness on top of your priority list. I mean, because he is just generally rude, right? Return to office. I mean, if that's really where we're focusing here is think of the language that's being used, return to office.

back to work. It's regressive in nature. People are trying to go backwards to the way that it was pre-COVID as if COVID was just some pause. And now we can unpause and go back to the way that it was. Well, COVID transformed everyone and every business forever in an undeniable way. We've learned something and we have transformed and we can't go back to pre-COVID because we had COVID. And so what needs to happen is companies need to adapt.

I mean, that is literally the biggest challenge that every company has right now is how do we adapt? This is one of the things we need to adapt to. And Jamie Diamond sounds like another boomer who is frustrated with Gen Z for not doing it the way that we did things around here, which is totally antiquated.

Chad (06:17.137)

Old work versus new work. mean, really, and it's interesting because as you listen to, to me, this is an entire leadership, kind of like 101, listening to a guy who obviously is incredibly successful, but he's been successful one way. And then you change the entire landscape on him. He's pissed off. He's pissed off because that's not how he learned how to do the job. He can't manage apparently remotely.

Right? So he's used to Henry Ford, 40 to 40 hours a week, punching a clock. Hell, he said seven days a week for God's sakes. So how do we, how do we get, do we, do we just wait till all these boomers die before we can actually progress, progress into working more efficiently and actually working more humanly, being able to get off this call, go take my stuff out of the washer and put it in the dryer and then get back to work. Or I mean,

I don't understand. What do we have to wait for till we actually move forward as opposed to, like you said, backwards?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (07:24.386)

to wait. The second half of what he said, I agree with him, which is this is the way that JP Morgan does it. If you don't like it, then don't work here. And so that's their style. And that's their approach. There are a thousand young people, a thousand, mean, tens of thousands of young people who will gladly take a role and work 90 hours a week at JP Morgan so they can have it on their resume, knowing they're going to be totally burned out after two years and then they'll move on. But they've got JP Morgan on their resume. And that was worth the effort. Right. That is a

That's a trade-off that, you know, free market capitalism works both ways, right? Employees get to opt in to the deal that they know that they're going to get there. But you look at Spotify with that famous billboard, we treat our employees like adults or whatever they said. They are already doing it the new way of working and the people who want to work there, work there. So everyone will find where they belong and whether it works in the long term. mean,

Joel (08:06.279)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (08:17.772)

I don't think you have to have a great culture to be profitable. think crappy cultures can be profitable too. And JP Morgan is evidence of that. But I think if you want to have kind of explosive transformative growth that navigates through these changing times, everything that's happening with the Trump administration is going to require adaptability. And if you demonstrate a lack of adaptability on a basic thing like RTO, where else are you lacking adaptability in other areas where maybe it's more critical?

Chad (08:43.497)

So real quick, you mentioned culture and having to be in the office, that's part of the culture, that's what you're gonna get with JP Morgan Chase. The thing is for me, from a leadership standpoint, I'm always thinking about how do I get the best talent? And you can't just get the best talent in where your headquarters is or where you are set up physically, right? So how do companies like JP Morgan Chase, how do they compete?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (08:48.91)

you

Chad (09:12.177)

in the future when they, prospectively, are not going to get the best talent.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (09:17.09)

JP Morgan has a name that they don't have to compete. They're going to get plenty of top talent, I think. I look at a different company like Shurm. Let's talk about Shurm. Probably a lot of... So I interviewed... Sorry. I interviewed Johnny C. Taylor right after they announced that they were going to do the IND. That interview is on YouTube if you want to check it out. And that day I was asking them how the company is doing, what they're doing just for their own hiring. This is not even about the EI, right? They said, we've got 26 open positions.

Chad (09:22.387)

Okay.

Joel (09:26.809)

That escalated quickly.

Chad (09:41.779)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (09:47.288)

for content writers. I was like, wow, that is a lot of open positions for a company the size of Shurm for content writers. And they had to be based in DC. I was like, where are they going to find 26 people? That company will struggle more than JP Morgan, which everyone wants JP Morgan on their resume. Does everyone want Shurm on their resume? Maybe less so.

Chad (09:54.313)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (10:10.759)

Yeah, yeah, good point.

Joel (10:10.963)

I do, I do think from a branding branding perspective, brand means something more than it did 10 years ago. And it means whether it's Spotify or JP Morgan, and where we work is sort of based on, I want a remote experience? Do I want a hybrid or do I want the full at work and brand is something that's going get me there. One of things I do think that is debatable and I want your thoughts are that young people are hurt by work from home. You know, they can't, they can't.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (10:36.888)

Yeah.

Joel (10:38.503)

meant there's no mentorship, there's no serendipity, there's no hanging out after work. And I was young once and I can tell you that if I was 25 working from home, I would not have sort of been as good as I am today because I wouldn't have been able to have those experiences. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (10:57.048)

Well, I may be a bad example, but I've always worked from home. I've literally never had an in-office job. I was working at Oracle. Well, first I was working at Taleo right out of my MBA, and then that got acquired by Oracle. And I was always at home. But we had a work from home culture. So I did have many mentors, and I had lots of interactions. And I was fine. However,

When I was CHRO at a technology company that was hybrid, we got a lot of complaints from young people saying they were feeling left behind and reflecting exactly the thoughts that you had. So I think it depends on how well the company is at supporting your employees. Some are doing it well and some aren't, right?

Chad (11:42.727)

I think that comes down to the selection process. Not to mention, what it feels like is that we're working more toward time as opposed to the objectives in the outcomes. So if it only takes me 20 hours to do something that it takes somebody else 40 hours to do.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (12:00.354)

Yeah.

Chad (12:07.591)

Why am I going to have to come in and stand at the water cooler and go have conversations with my buddies instead of doing work? Because I'm already done. I remember actually having salespeople who already hit their goal and I sent them home because they wouldn't leave everybody else alone because they were like, well, I'm already 120 % of goal and I still got 10 days left. Okay, go home. Right? So I don't understand. It just feels like

Joel (12:25.811)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (12:26.062)

You

Chad (12:34.651)

The objective and the outcome is what we should be caring about, but we're not. We're caring about having butts in seats and working 40 hours. Why is that?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (12:44.078)

because we're bad leaders. 85 % of leaders are bad at leadership. And that's the problem. So when you're in person and the way that it used to be back in the old days, we were in the action trap. The action trap is results come from actions. So let's focus on what actions we need to do to get results. And that is really easy to manage in person because you're just looking at activities and managing activities. And now in order to do this when people are home and you can't manage their activity,

Chad (12:53.095)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (13:13.154)

because you're not looking at them, you have to manage to the objective and you have to manage to the mindset. So instead of just focusing on action, you have to look deeper. What gets people to act in the way we need them to act consistently in a sustained way over time? Well, that's what beliefs they hold about the nature of work and what they're doing. And so how do we drive the right beliefs? And I mean, that's hard work. That's really advanced leadership and requires a certain amount of self-actualization to be able to even ask that question.

Joel (13:37.596)

you

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (13:42.766)

let alone influence the answer to that question for the people that you work with that aren't even in front of you. So we didn't even master 101 management and now we're trying to do 201 and everyone's like, this is way overwhelming. Let's go back to 101 because at least we had a shot at that.

Joel (13:55.559)

you

Joel (13:58.835)

Well, it's funny that you, mentioned leadership, because our, new president, has been in the news because he has a few thoughts on return, to work and, by chance, he'll be able to probably lay off a lot of people who don't want to come back to work, but he had something he had to this to say, and I want to play it and also get your opinion on this.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (14:57.55)

Yeah.

Chad (14:58.557)

Sounds like what he does.

Joel (15:05.619)

thoughts.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (15:05.838)

Oh, Donald Trump. mean, the 10 or 20 % thing has already been proven not to be true. We know that people work, they're actually more productive from home. mean, a thousand studies will tell you that. They may not be working 100 % of the time between the hours of eight and 5 PM, but that doesn't mean that their productivity has gone down. On the buyout front, the state of California was the client of my one. So this is not the federal government, but it is.

government. And I remember they brought me in to talk about generational dynamics and how to manage people. And one of the managers raised their hand and said, what do I do when my employee consistently shows up 45 minutes late to work? And I said, what do mean? What do you do? You tell them not to, or they get fired. And he goes, I can't fire my employees. And there's just nothing that these managers had.

their disposal to shift behavior like that in the government because of all of the regulations to protected employees. So I think a lot of Democrats are secretly really excited about what Trump is doing in terms of laying off all these federal workers, because everyone knows there's been a massive amount of waste. The problem is the haste. The problem is how quickly and haphazardly and chaotically this is getting rolled out. And I do think the buyout was fair. I really hope that people who get the buyout get the buyout.

Chad (16:28.541)

Yes.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (16:28.854)

because will they actually get paid out? I don't know if they do. That was a win-win for a lot of people. 75,000 people accepted that offer. Some of those people then got fired afterwards because of how messy the communication is and the organizational whole thing is obviously a dumpster fire. So, I mean, I don't actually disagree with a lot of what Trump said there, except that I do believe that you want to, you know, what's the number one rule of HR is assume good intent.

Joel (16:39.197)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (16:55.726)

So if you assume good intent of your employees working from home, you assume that they're 80, 90 % of the time. And if they're achieving your results, is it really a problem that they're taking 10 or 20 % of the time off? And he's even flipped the numbers, which I think is grossly overstated.

Chad (17:10.003)

Yeah, well, and then.

Joel (17:10.547)

How much of RTO is a layoff strategy versus a real change?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (17:14.806)

They said it was in that remember the op-ed that Elon Musk wrote with Vivek Ramaswani. They said we're hoping that by forcing people back into the office, people will quit. I appreciated the straightforward nature of that because you know that Meta did that. You know that Amazon did that. You know that all these companies wanted people to quit. And in fact, I just read an article like I couldn't figure out which company it was. It was on Reddit.

Chad (17:17.885)

Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (17:23.465)

40 %? Yeah.

Joel (17:32.743)

Asla.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (17:40.896)

about there was this company that forced everyone back in the office, all these companies, all these families relocated, and then they got laid off after they relocated. I mean, that's just wild, know, there's lack of integrity. You're messing with people's lives.

Chad (17:54.205)

Yeah. Yeah. So when we, we talk about RTO and how it's actually hurting women in the workforce, which we, we, we started getting great participation rates. got the best participation rates we've ever had with individuals with disabilities because they could work from home and that was their accommodation and they could get shit done from home. But this whole RTO things fucking that all up. So I guess at the end of the day from a,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (18:10.306)

Yeah.

Chad (18:22.121)

And maybe it doesn't matter anymore because nobody gives a shit about DEI or at least, you know, 10 companies do nowadays. I don't know what, what's this going to shake out to look like? Is it, is it going to be a Jamie diamond? Maybe not them, but that kind of a company that says RTO is the only way to go. And they suffer because they can't get the talent.

They can't get productivity up because they don't have the people. They're stretching their people too thin. There's way too much attrition. I mean, is it gonna have to come to that cluster fuck before it actually changes?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (18:56.878)

Well, let's think about, look into history for our answers. What happens in sustained periods of wealth equity gaps, widening and being grossly unfair, right? There will be a time, something's gonna blow up, right? At some point, if this doesn't adjust. Now there are some real solutions that don't involve blowing up capitalism or blowing up the government.

Joel (19:08.529)

pitchforks.

Chad (19:09.895)

Revolution. Call the French.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (19:23.072)

like Pete Stavros at KKR, he's heading up this movement around ESOPs, Employee Stock Ownership Programs. If you share equity with employees all the way down to the front line, then you have people who are going to have an ownership mindset. They're going to want to be hungry to drive results because they too will win from that. The wealth gap gets, what's the opposite of wide? Thinner, narrower, right? Narrower. And so everybody wins. Companies will thrive. People come along for the ride.

Chad (19:44.893)

Yeah, we're an arrow, yeah.

Joel (19:45.159)

Narrow, narrow.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (19:51.788)

That's a no-brainer in my mind. But a lot of people look at that solution. CEOs say, well, I don't want to dilute my equity. I'm not interested in that. you know, which will come first, the chicken or the egg?

Chad (20:03.269)

wages too. mean, wages, we haven't seen wages rise on the, on the bottom end, but CEOs are about 1500 % up since 1978. We take a look at the, the, the people who are actually doing the work every single day, the hard work, and they see a 14%. I mean, there's gotta be something getting equity in a company. That's great. Long-term wealth. That's wonderful. But we've got people right now that are hurting.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (20:21.998)

Yeah.

Chad (20:30.909)

and they're hurting from paycheck to paycheck if they can even make it that far without getting a second job. I mean, it just to me, the whole workforce right now seems like a total clusterfuck. We're gonna get ready to push a bunch, maybe millions of immigrants out, which means there going to be a lot of jobs that Americans don't wanna do. It just seems like there's just chaos that's gonna be happening all over the place.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (20:57.472)

The problem, and this is why I think HR has gotten more and more marginalized over the last decade, is because people in HR think and say what you just said, but this isn't right. We got to fix this for the people, right? But then they come to the executive boardroom and they say, we got to fix this for the people. And everyone else is looking at the balance sheet and saying, yeah, but that's bad for the balance sheet. And so therefore that's a bad idea. Go back to your hole. Well, but it's

Chad (21:21.459)

But it's not. Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (21:24.654)

In the short term, it is a bad idea for the balance sheet, right? In the short term, paying people who will accept $7 an hour, $9 an hour hurts our bottom line. Show me the incentive to do that if for the time being it's still working. Now something changes later. Like I remember working at a big tech company and we had a bunch of managers complaining to HR about the fact that there was a six year freeze on increases and they wanted...

to be able to compensate their team. And they said, we're going to lose top performers. We're going to lose top performance. You better give us budget. And the compensation committee, which was the six person team that worked with the CEO, came into HR and said, listen, we're looking at our attrition numbers. We're at 10%, 12%. We're fine with that. We're not worried about losing top performers right now. If it gets to 15%, 20%, maybe we'll talk about it. But we don't care if people quit. In fact, let's get them to quit and bring on some new people from Amazon and see if they can shake things up over here.

So that's the mentality that CFOs, CEOs, board members, investors have that HR says, but wait, it's not good for people. And everyone looks at them like, you don't get this. We're running a business here. And even if those CEOs feel differently in their hearts, they think, I really wish I could do better. They're in a spot where they can't because their job is to provide shareholder value. And if they don't, they'll get replaced. Turnover for CEOs right now is at an all time high.

Joel (22:44.883)

Thank

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (22:48.066)

People are getting replaced like that if they're not driving results and doing it quickly. So the short-term thinking is encouraged and it's incentivized. So until that gets disincentivized, people are going to keep making the same decisions they've been making, which is getting further and further away from helping the common man.

Joel (22:50.515)

Hmm.

Joel (22:56.003)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (23:04.648)

Well, that's where we've been talking about narrative on the show for a very long time. We've got to stop talking about metrics that we feel are important, like time to hire, cost per hire, those types of things. C-suite didn't give a shit about that. Tell them about how it actually impacts the bottom line, how it impacts EBITDA. How can you actually make that happen? If we have positions that are open or we're stretching people too thin, or as you had said, like Amazon, think that,

Joel (23:16.883)

Thank

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (23:20.301)

Right.

Chad (23:34.161)

letter that was leaked where they had like eight billion in attrition that impacted the bottom line at eight billion dollars. Now that means something. Why aren't we having those discussions more on?

Joel (23:35.259)

Jassy.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (23:48.936)

HR leaders not having those discussions more often? I think because they are on the front line of the pain and the hurt that they see that the American people are experiencing. Did you see that State of the Nation report that came out a couple of weeks ago? It was put together by some professor at Tulane University. You got a bipartisan group of experts to look at the most important data points about how we're doing as a nation.

Chad (23:50.397)

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (24:13.526)

On economic prosperity, we were number one compared to every other country in the world. On productivity, we're number one compared to every other company, country in the world. We were the bottom of the list when it came to depression for young people, anxiety, opioid abuse, suicide rates, all of that. are the bottom of the barrel, right? So who gets notified about absenteeism because of mental illness at work? Who gets notified about

suicides within the organization, who deals with all of the fallout of how we are all falling apart. It's the HR team. And that's why they're saying, we got a problem here. But the CEO is further away from it. And they're talking to the investors every day. And they're saying, yeah, we do have a problem here right now. The competitive landscape is shifting. Tariffs is coming down the pike. We got to adjust and strategize. And we'll talk about mental health another day. That's a DEI thing. And they just got permission not to care about DEI because of what Trump did.

Chad (24:49.553)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (24:55.507)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (25:10.173)

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (25:11.116)

Now, if they didn't care about it, they won't care about it. If DEI can get ripped out of your company that quickly, you never really had it in the first place, in my opinion.

Joel (25:19.047)

Hmm. I mean, they really just need to rub some dirt on it. Dr. Kregel. I don't know if you've heard that remedy or not. the human side of it once, on one, I want to talk about the COVID COVID hits, the world goes work from home. A lot of companies came to market with a lot of money raised deal, remote oyster, velocity global. You've, probably know most or all of them is the technology failing.

Chad (25:19.283)

Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (25:23.842)

Hahaha!

Chad (25:24.484)

Ahahahahah

Joel (25:48.627)

companies to where they can't manage the way that they were promised when all these companies came to market or is there a different disconnect?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (25:56.686)

Tell me what you mean is the technology failing them.

Joel (25:59.175)

The technology promise to enable you to manage pay, on board, do everything that you do around the globe with technology. And we were not supposed to have a lot of these issues because this tech was going to solve all these issues, which leads me to think that maybe the tech is failing. But I was curious what, what your thoughts, can technology solve this problem and everyone can work from home, or is it just sort of a dead, a dead issue?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (26:29.13)

It's not for lack of technology. think the issue is the lack of integration in the technology. So you have all of these different tools that don't talk to each other that we're using to try and simplify our life. And what I noticed when COVID happened, I was already working from home, but then a couple other departments started working from home. Suddenly it was like, wait, now I've got text messages blowing up and Slack message blowing up and Teams and Zoom calls and all of these, you know,

monday.com and the smart sheet and a thousand different places to get notified and to get information and it just became fragmented. What's happening now with technology is AI is disrupting things way faster than previous technology has. And now you're going to get a thousand, a hundred thousand AI startups and those AI startups are going to be able to do what

200,000 person companies could do, but they're gonna do it with 200 people, right? I mean, the scale, the competitive market is gonna be much harder for every company to cope with because they're gonna be getting these arrows and these bullets coming from places they never saw coming. And that's gonna make us have to figure it out even faster. I mean, right now, what I'm hearing the most of from CEOs,

is we have to figure out how to break down these silos or we're going to die. Silo's have always been a problem. But now if we don't break down the silos, it's like, for example, tariffs. Who owns tariffs at your company? You got a tariffs are, you know, no tariffs affects everyone. There's not like one person accountable for the tariff strategy. It's going to finance, manufacturing, your pricing model, public affairs, legal. Everyone is affected and yet no one owns that. And so we have to figure out a way to communicate effectively. you know,

Joel (27:51.667)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (28:17.506)

going into the office, I don't think is the answer. I think it's about a mindset of sharing information, which we're disincentivized to do in a capitalist system because the more information I have compared to my peer, the more valuable I am, the more likely I am to get promoted. So we're in a system that incentivize information hoarding, but the only way to win is to information share. And so no wonder everyone struggles with it. This is an ego thing, but it's also a survival of the fittest thing.

Chad (28:43.741)

Well, talk about that a little bit because we have the discussion on the podcast a lot. I was in the military for 20 years and you have to be a team because if you're, if you're on the battlefield and you're not working as a team, I mean, there are bullets flying there. There are mortars flying, right? So you have to be a team. Promotion is something entirely different. You work your ass off and you get promoted if the system says you get promoted, right? So at the end of the day though, you are a team. You have to be a team. When I got into corporate America,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (28:51.842)

Yeah.

Joel (28:57.286)

You could die.

Chad (29:13.469)

They were talking about team, but nobody acts like a team. It is incredibly individualistic. And it seems like, I mean, ever since, you know, we've really put our arms around trickle down economics, that rugged individualism is the way that companies work. And that sounds kind of like the Jamie Dimon, the boomer way of doing things. It seems, how do we get out of, I mean, these are things that you do on a daily basis. This is culture.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (29:16.898)

Great.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (29:36.483)

Yeah.

Chad (29:42.483)

How can you move a very, very self-centered individualistic culture into a real team culture? Because we all know the teams that are out there in corporate America is just total bullshit.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (29:42.84)

Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (29:56.962)

Yeah, it really is. I think of the structure of a corporation. It's a pyramid structure. There's more money at the top, but less people, more people at the bottom, but less money. And you want to move up that pyramid. And the only way is to beat out the people at your level. So I want you to go down so I can go up. That's the only way for my job security to be safe, for my pay to go up, for my career progression, right? So that's what you're up against.

That system isn't going to change. We can't turn corporations upside down. We can't change incentive structures. mean, that is what it is. really, it's a, frankly, it's a spiritual problem, number one, because you have to get people to focus on leaders, to focus on effort instead of outcome necessarily. So you say, this is the belief we need to hold. This is how we want you to operate.

Those beliefs will lead you to take action as opposed to that kind of action. And by holding those beliefs, you're going to help us drive success. And we have to just count on that working. And it's counterintuitive to how we are built to act. And it's counterintuitive to the American dream. We are an independent culture. That is what we're about. The less I need you, the better I'm doing. If I don't need you for financial support, if I don't need you for emotional support, if I don't need you for physical support, I'm doing great.

We all want to be independently wealthy, right? And we all want to be so fabulously well that I don't need a therapist and I don't need, you I'm good. I'm good. I got it. That's the culture. So we have to flip that. And that really is a spiritual issue. I don't think there's an answer to that necessarily. mean, just pocket the people who are doing this great. You know, one of the things I read the other day is that a lot of CEOs are moving from public companies to private companies because the public markets make

this spotlight on results so incredibly bright that it just allows you from doing interesting things that maybe take more time. And so CEOs are saying, forget it. I don't want the spotlight on me. It'll allow me to lead the way that I want to lead. And you know who else might be a savior in this is private equity. Surprisingly, mean, private equity is always given such a bad rap because they come in and they slash and burn and you hear the red lobster story and it's just chaos and horror. But

Joel (31:53.053)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (32:16.064)

Ultimately, when private equity buys a company, that's a five-year investment that they've got. You've got a lot of money that you can invest in a company to turn it around. And so that's a longer horizon, time horizon, to be thinking about than a public company, which is on these quarterly stock price reporting investor calls.

Joel (32:34.131)

And on that note, I want to talk about the all you can eat shrimp deal now running at red lobster. Just kidding. You're, you're it's this guy. So you're talking support. Chad's talking teams. And I want to talk about, one of the ultimate teams in the corporate world, which are the unions. The unions really had a moment in 2024. The UAW had a big win. Others did. know that you're laughing. bye bye. Okay. So

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (32:37.608)

hahahahah

Chad (32:38.473)

If anybody knows about all you can eat, it's that man.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (32:50.018)

Mmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (32:53.678)

Yeah.

Bye bye now. It was nice knowing you, unions.

Joel (33:00.263)

So I was going to ask your opinion on the union's impact on work from home, return to office, any kind of power they have there. You're basically saying they're neutered at this point and have little to no power.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (33:11.704)

think the unions are shocked at what Trump is doing and how they are being neutered at this point. And unions are like companies. They're good unions and they're bad unions, right? And some unions are good for business and people, and some unions are bad for everyone. Like the Longshoremen strike showed just what, those are like mafiosos, you know, that are holding the American public hostage with their strike, anti-automation. Like that's crazy. Those are actual criminals, right? And then you've got other unions that are making sure that people are safe. They're getting paid well.

They're making leaders who don't listen, listen, which they need to do. Leaders need to listen. And so they're not listening. Unions that make that happen, that's all positive. Do unions have a say? I guess it depends. I don't think that they're going to have a lot of power moving forward. They were gaining power, and that was looking like they were moving towards the general strike that may still happen. I think it's going to have a lot less ump than 2026.

Chad (34:03.081)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (34:07.945)

So it sounds like, again, we've got the Jamie Diamonds of the world who are micromanagers. And I mean, literally, one of the reasons why he went into that tirade was one of his managers said, look, I have a distributed team and we worked best during COVID. We actually got more productivity. We got more done. Can the managers, can I?

actually have control over how my team works because I know them better and I know how to get more out of them. And that's where he went into that tirade. So are we getting to the point where at the very top, we have the micromanagement that's happening. And again, this is not, not every company, but micromanagement is happening. And we have immigration that's pushing people out. We've got a government who's pushing people out. We've got this huge mismatch from the individuals who are going to be available.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (34:42.604)

Yeah.

Chad (35:03.931)

and the jobs that are going to be available, because you know a lot of those white collar people are not going to be picking tomatoes or working the docks. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? Is there one? Because right now it all seems like just a total implosion of the talent market.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (35:13.902)

Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (35:25.592)

I think anyone who tells you what the future is going to look like is selling something. And so I can't tell you where, where the, what's going to happen. Are we going to implode or not? I mean, it's not looking great right now. In my opinion. I'm not overly optimistic. think something may surprise. There's always something that surprises us, right? COVID surprised us, the Trump administration, Doge is surprising us. I there's going to be some big thing that surprises us.

Maybe we're gonna get, you know, we're all gonna get bird flu and no one's gonna wear their masks this time, so we're all gonna die. So maybe that'll be all we have to worry about next year.

Chad (35:59.881)

That's not a line. A line at the end of the tunnel, Doc. I need a light.

Joel (36:09.415)

Well,

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (36:10.318)

Well, I think ESOPs are a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm definitely fascinated and passionate about that. think leaders, AI is not a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm sorry, I saw JD Vance's speech in Paris about, AI will never replace human beings. It was like, dude, it already has. mean, literally that week there was a massive layoff at Workday because they want to invest in AI.

I mean, it's just shocking how much BS we're being fed. So I don't know, but right at the end of that tunnel is like, let's all just buy some land in the country and live off the earth. Can we like learn how to do that?

Chad (36:50.665)

Okay, and I'm going to say the American dream, Doc, is alive and well, but it's in Europe.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (36:56.258)

Yeah, I don't know. The American dream is not necessarily dreamy anymore. know, I mean, this independent culture, the free thinking thing, everything's shifting right now. I don't even really know what I'm looking at. I will say, here's one thing that we can all learn from. Jamie Dimon, so 2500 years ago, Socrates was complaining about young people today.

Joel (36:59.387)

Until the Russians move in.

Chad (37:17.449)

Hmm?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (37:26.03)

And he said, young people today, they value chatter and the place of hard work and they're too focused on luxuries. It's like the complaints haven't even changed in 2,500 years. It is naturally ingrained in us to look down upon the younger generation and say they're not doing it right. We need to graduate from that. So we need to grow up and realize that every generation brings with it

Chad (37:43.785)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (37:52.33)

new dynamics, not because these people are different, but because the world is different. It's changing so quickly. Here's what I'm doing. I'm focusing on upskilling. I'm learning everything that I can about AI. I'm reading voraciously. I'm networking like crazy. There is no job security anymore anywhere, right? It used to be people had to choose between industry and government. And if you go into industry, you maybe have more earning potential, but less job security. In government, you have more job security, less earning potential. Well,

Nobody's got job security anymore. The only job security you can get is if you're a top performer. So do whatever you can to be a top performer and that is your job security. That's what I'm doing.

Joel (38:29.843)

And that's all we have for the Feel Good podcast of the year, everybody. By the way, if you have Socrates on your bingo card, please make sure that you stamp that. Or Socrates for our audience. Doc, settle an argument for us on the show, and we'll let you go. I know your time is precious. If the iPhone were invented today, could it have been?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (38:32.077)

Hahaha!

Chad (38:32.093)

Hahaha!

Chad (38:40.425)

Nobody listening to the Chad and Cheese podcast was...

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (38:41.23)

Yeah.

Joel (38:57.563)

What could it have been created and produced in a work from home environment?

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (39:05.74)

Hmm. If the iPhone didn't exist until now and someone had the idea at Apple. Yeah. I mean, when I was working from home in 2008, I worked for Oracle, which is one of the biggest tech companies in the world and has had the best year it ever had last year. It has grown at an outrageous pace and beat its competitors and dominated the stock market.

every year and they were entirely work from home culture. Larry works from his island in Hawaii and everyone works from home except for a few people at HQ and they are they invented the cloud. mean yes they you can do you can be innovative and creative working from home absolutely if you know how Oracle knows how. Jamie Dimon doesn't know how so maybe Jamie should call Larry.

Joel (39:57.021)

All right, everyone, come off the ledge and give a round of applause to Dr. Jessica Kriegel. Dr. Kriegel, for our audience that wants to connect with you, learn more, maybe listen to your podcast, which I'm obviously going to go to do right now, where would you send them?

Chad (40:03.785)

Thanks for coming on, Doc.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (40:16.684)

Well, my podcast is called Culture Leaders and I have a newsletter that's on LinkedIn called This Week in Culture. comes out every Wednesday where I give you my thoughts of the week. So if you're feeling a little bit depressed, stay tuned to my newsletter because it will make you more depressed every week. Just kidding, sometimes I say good things.

Joel (40:34.097)

Which is why I'm thankful for the All You Can Eat Shrimp Special at Red Lobster down the street from my neighborhood. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.

Chad (40:36.238)

UGH

Chad (40:39.803)

Hehehehe

Dr. Jessica Kriegel (40:41.001)

Hahaha!

Chad (40:44.701)

We out!