Managing in the Age of Uncertainty

I’m eating my own dog food.

Ok, I’m building something in public.

The phrase “building in public” is predominantly a gen-z thing, but it’s an idea that is generationally agnostic. Building in public is a form a social communication where founders and creators share their journey to create something “in public” — including the sometimes messy stories that accompany the journey.

Having grown up in the “information is power” era of corporations, I love reading the stories of founders and their trials and tribulations. As a founder of a software company myself, I truly enjoy learning from others.

But I think something much larger is behind the “building in public” phenomenon. I think the idea of building something in public is now an essential part of telling a great career story, especially when the builder is using AI to create something of value. As readers of this newsletter know, I believe we’re witnessing the end of the corporate ladder as boomers knew it. Instead, millennials and gen-z will have a working future that is defined by the quality of their story — and whether it’s a best seller or not.

In fact, I think it’s possible that every job opportunity available in the future will have a requirement to show how a prospective employee has already built some AI-powered software experience in the public space.

It’s no longer enough to “use” AI to help you get your job done more productively; a great career story must include building something of value using AI.

Career Story Builder Launches Next Week

Here’s what I’m building in public: I’m teaming up with my friend and master storyteller Patti Sanchez (co-author of Illuminate) to launch what we’re calling the Career Story Builder – an AI-powered tool that helps anyone tell a compelling story about themself.

The tool is based on Patti’s fabulous three-act framework for telling strategic stories, and we’ve combined it with my best practices for telling career stories. I’ve been inspired by so many great storytellers — especially Rene Siegal, Erin Bergamo-Tacy and Patti — to help job seekers in the age of AI tell better stories about themselves.

So I started building a software tool in Claude. I wasn’t doing it by myself; Patti was giving me some really good suggestions.

Claude is amazing to visualize a software experience. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to imagine a wireframe for a software tool and build a working demo of the Career Story Builder. AI in some ways plays to the strengths of communicators. The clearer the outcome you’re looking to create with AI, the better things go.

In the spirit of radical transparency of building in public, the CTO of The Culture Platform and our lead UX designer eventually took over development of Career Story Builder — but I would say our time-to-market was at least 50% faster because I produced a working demo of the idea using Claude as my thought partner.

Here’s how the landing page for our story builder looks:

Was there a “messy” part?

It was easy to obtain an API key to integrate OpenAI’s chatbot into The Culture Platform for the Career Story Builder.

The messy part is figuring out what OpenAI charges. It makes no sense when you read it: Five dollars buys you “2 million inputs and 500,000 output tokens.” OpenAI doesn’t specify what an “input” is or what an “output” is; nor does it define a “token.”

What this means to an entrepreneur is simple: I’m not completely sure what my cost of goods sold (COGS) actually is. I know use of OpenAI is metered by what I get for the inputs/outputs per five dollars, so I’m not worried that I’ll have runaway spending.

What I am worried about is letting users down if for some reason I run out of my metered tokens while someone is using Career Story Builder — and the experience is a let down.

This feels like a compromise.

So my message to Sam Altman & co. is pretty simple: clarify your pricing. While I’m realistic about the Career Story Builder’s potential, like all entrepreneurs I want to believe it will be hit or go viral. More than anything, I don’t want my enabling partner — my partner providing the AI-powered part of the tool — to keep it from reaching its full potential.

Webinar Launch: Oct. 23

Patti and I are on a mission to help people, and to that end, we’re officially launching the tool on Oct 23 at 10 a.m. PST, and I’d like to invite the readers of this newsletter to attend, learn and spread the word about our Career Story Builder. We’re hoping to start a movement and would love your support.

You can register here to our webinar and the launch of our tool:

In Summary: Principles of Managing in the Age of Uncertainty

• I left Cisco to answer this question with research and evidence: What does the manager of the future look like? What are millennials and gen-z seeking in a manager? Which behaviors, tactics, skills or processes matter? What’s it going to take to attract and keep the best people over the next decade? In short, how to be a great manager.

• Based on this research, the core philosophy of this newsletter is rooted in one idea: successful managers in this moment in time, for this generation of talent, need to be “career dot-connectors.” The next-gen doesn’t expect to spend their entire career on your team — that’s an idea boomers grew up with. A job on your team is like a chapter in a career story to the current generation. If you want the best people on your team, you have to connect the dots between roles on the team and the career opportunities of the people working on the team.

• What is the“Age of Uncertainty”? If the industrial age was about taking predictable steps up the ladder, the age of uncertainty is about finding or discovering the path of a career without any predictable steps, without an obvious ladder — it’s why being a career dot-connector will differentiate you as a manager.

• How to be a Great Manager in the Age of Uncertainty: Be a Career Dot Connector is available on Amazon.

• What kind of manager are you? Take my free self-assessment and learn about yourself.