Why HR Doesn't—Can't—Work

HR is broken—and no, it’s not just your jaded coworkers whispering that by the watercooler. Jordan Birnbaum, former nightclub impresario turned I/O psychologist (yes, seriously), joins The Chad & Cheese Podcast to make the bold claim that HR can’t work... because it was never built to. 💥

📉 HR needs to be blown up and restructured like Blockbuster in a Netflix world.

🪑 “Seat at the table”? Bring your folding chair.

🧠 Compliance should be in Legal, comp in Finance, and HR? Maybe just focus on helping people instead of terrifying them.

It’s guidance counselor vs. Dean of Discipline, with a dash of behavioral economics and a splash of snark. Oh, and AI might burn the whole thing down anyway.

So grab a vodka tonic, cancel your next HR all-hands, and listen up.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:32.431)

This is the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman joined as always, Chad. So washes in the shotgun position as we welcome Jordan Birbaum, co founder at the Glenda group, Jordan, welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast.

Chad (00:38.254)

Hello.

Jordan Birnbaum (00:49.314)

Thank you, I am so delighted to be here. However, I was told that there would be no snark, so I have to kind of readjust my expectations for the next few minutes.

Chad (00:57.134)

You haven't been paying attention.

Joel Cheesman (00:57.399)

I'm sorry, do you know what show this is?

Jordan Birnbaum (01:02.286)

I have been a long time listener. I am a big fan of you both collectively and individually. And each of you I find has something really powerfully unique. I love that Chad is constantly looking at how things are about to change. He embraces change like no one I've met. And Joel, your tidbits on LinkedIn are amongst the most usable content that I have. So.

Let me just kick things off by totally ingratiating myself to both of you so that you'll be inclined to be kind to me from here on out.

Joel Cheesman (01:34.735)

Totally buttering us up, Chad. I'm not falling for the banana in the tailpipe on this one.

Chad (01:37.072)

Smart.

Yeah, you can tell he's an IO-psych. He knows. He knows how to bring people in. He knows.

Joel Cheesman (01:44.419)

All right, Jordan, a of our listeners won't know you. Give us the elevator pitch.

Jordan Birnbaum (01:49.908)

Well, I would say that they should know me like 700 episodes ago, but that's a different discussion. I am an IO psychologist with a really varied background. I've been a market maker of Japanese equity warrants. helped take an internet company public. owned a nightclub in Los Angeles for 10 years. And then I became an IO psychologist and designed a product called Compass for ADP that won HR tech product of the year.

Joel Cheesman (01:55.791)

You

Jordan Birnbaum (02:15.372)

And since then, I have been doing a lot of consulting around the intersection of behavioral economics, behavioral science, and industrial and organizational psychology, which is for me a wonderful landing place and I'm having a great time.

Chad (02:31.61)

What kind of club? That's the question.

Jordan Birnbaum (02:34.314)

It was called the Vanguard. It was on Hollywood Boulevard between Gower and Bronson. We were primarily known for electronic dance music. It was really large. We held 2,000 people. And we had a great sound system, something called the Function One. And so all the best DJs wanted to play our plays because of the sound system. So every weekend we would bring in the big international DJs. If you're familiar with EDM, it's all the biggest names, Tiesto,

Chad (02:50.061)

huh.

Jordan Birnbaum (03:03.95)

You know, one of the fun things, one of the big like fun tidbits I like to share is the first time that we booked David Guetta, it was for 8,000. The last time we booked him, it was for 80,000. So just to give you sense of like what has happened in that career. So I had a wonderful time with the Vanguard, the stories we could do an entire episode on just both the experiences of being a club owner in Hollywood and also like

Joel Cheesman (03:04.365)

Chad's a huge fan of the EDM, can't you tell?

Chad (03:13.744)

huh.

Cool.

Jordan Birnbaum (03:33.378)

the psychological experiences of owning a tooth, you know, seeing 2000 drunk people every night gives you some insights into the human.

Joel Cheesman (03:40.591)

All right, biggest star that came in and you hung out with. Ooh, Prince, that is really big.

Jordan Birnbaum (03:43.907)

Prince.

Chad (03:45.616)

Ooh, that's big.

Jordan Birnbaum (03:47.544)

But it's a long list though. It's, and there, know, and Prisms are regular. yeah, so. Sunday night, Steve.

Chad (03:49.988)

That's big.

No shit.

See, this is why you didn't get invited on earlier, Jordan, because we weren't invited to see Prince. So I don't wanna hear any shit from you.

Joel Cheesman (04:01.913)

Yeah, he buried the lead on that one. He buried the lead on that one.

Jordan Birnbaum (04:06.144)

In my defense, I didn't know you yet.

Chad (04:08.656)

It's not my fault.

Joel Cheesman (04:08.909)

Now is Prince in your background? People that are listening can't get this, but you have a wall of memorabilia from Einstein to John Lennon. I'm guessing there's a Prince figurine. Okay. Yeah. His purple, purple badness.

Jordan Birnbaum (04:13.722)

yeah.

Chad (04:20.196)

Got it. there he is. Yep.

Jordan Birnbaum (04:25.55)

He's Mozart. His genius is unmeasurable.

Joel Cheesman (04:31.96)

Yeah.

Chad (04:32.9)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (04:35.481)

Did he make you pancakes or play basketball with you? that okay?

Jordan Birnbaum (04:38.734)

Neither. He did pitch me on letting him take over the club whenever he felt like it. And so he wanted me to just clear my calendar. just whenever he got a whim, he would create like some kind of huge event. And I wanted to, but I was like, I got, you know, I got 150 people to pay, man. I'm like, can't just chance it on you. so that opportunity evaporated.

Chad (04:48.346)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (04:57.657)

Yeah.

Chad (04:57.68)

I got stuff to do.

Chad (05:02.042)

It would have been yes if Charlie Murphy would have been pulling it together. It would have been yes.

Joel Cheesman (05:02.223)

So now you're...

Jordan Birnbaum (05:06.668)

Yeah, put a little bit of it there.

Joel Cheesman (05:07.097)

So now you're ahead of the much less sexier Glinda group. Give us, what's behind that name? What's the story?

Jordan Birnbaum (05:14.838)

So, you know, I mentioned this tool that I created at ADP called Compass. The way that it worked was we used email-based coaching that I wrote that was very heavily behavioral science-based. And we got people really bought in and they ended up having some pretty impressive score improvements. And what I would tell everybody is I don't know anything about leadership that we don't all know. What this was, was what happens when you apply behavioral science.

Chad (05:44.272)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (05:44.716)

Anyway, when I was forming the Glinda group, I partnered with a former colleague of mine from ADP who was with me while that was happening. And she said something to the effect of, know, I've seen you use behavioral science to affect lots of people. But the thing is, is that you did it for good. You're like a wizard, but for good. I was like, yeah, I'm like Glinda. And we just sort of chuckled and then looked at each other was like, wait a minute. And sure enough. And then...

We probably in the back of our minds knew but the wicked movie was coming out like, you know, basically 30 days after we announced so We figured that was a good good omen

Joel Cheesman (06:22.999)

And Glenda the good group is too long. So Glenda group. Yeah.

Jordan Birnbaum (06:25.772)

Wait, yeah.

Chad (06:26.768)

I actually like Glenda, the good girl. Well, we're here today, Jordan, because you actually penned an article called, Why HR Doesn't Can't Work. And we kind of feel that day to day, but you've kind of like broken it down into different archetypes and things like that. So go ahead. What did you do? How did you come to this in the first place? Because obviously we've seen where HR doesn't can't work, but

you broke it down in a very technical way. So talk a little bit about that. You saw a problem, you just wanted to attack it this way. How did you go about it?

Jordan Birnbaum (07:07.374)

You know, I don't know that I could even answer how it came to me. would say that one of my, I think that one of my gifts is that like I sometimes will just notice stuff and point it out and it's pretty obvious that it was there. It's just hadn't been seen yet. And so I feel like that's what happened here. But I just, while I went back to school, one of the good things about going back to school after you've been in the workplace for a long time is that,

Chad (07:14.809)

and a dream.

Chad (07:25.136)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (07:35.342)

it's something it's an entirely different experience. And now you get these theories and you get, you know, I have two decades of experience now to compare to these theories. And I think that probably in some of that thinking is where this realization came up where it's like, even if you think about like, what's the purpose of performance management? Like, is it to hold people accountable? Or is it to drive their performance? Because those would take two very

different approaches if you had clarity on what it was all about. And so that to me is a little bit representative of the whole problem with HR, which is that the people who are responsible for like making us afraid and keeping us in line are also the same people who are responsible for motivating and engaging us and making us loyal to the company. how does that work? And what I realized was that it was very reminiscent of the archetype of high school.

Joel Cheesman (08:20.556)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (08:27.95)

If you thought about like the Dean of Students who was there to make sure that we were all scared of consequences if we misbehave. And then you had the guidance counselor who was there to be like this really safe and nurturing figure to help us discover ourselves. And what I realized was that somehow in HR, they thought it would be a good idea to take the guidance counselor and the Dean of Students and combine it into one role. And that's a really bad decision.

Chad (08:32.154)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (08:36.058)

paddle.

Jordan Birnbaum (08:58.338)

because the two worlds undermine each other and that is what leaves HR unable to fully execute on either.

Chad (09:06.554)

So if it's so flawed, which we've seen different aspects, no question that it is flawed, what do we do about it? Do we have to implode the current system framework and rebuild?

Joel Cheesman (09:19.555)

load up.

Jordan Birnbaum (09:23.318)

I think we do, you know, and I tell sort of like a fanciful imagining of how HR first came to be. And if you sort of take a step back, what I think it is, is that HR is all the stuff that senior leaders didn't want to deal with. And usually the type of people who end up in senior leadership roles are very achievement oriented. And so they like...

objective metrics that they can hit. And they like unambiguous victories. And that the two things that people aren't are unambiguous or objective. And so it's easy to see how most senior leaders would gravitate to things like sales and marketing or even client success. But when it comes to things like training and developing people and keeping them engaged, that is so far.

Chad (09:54.608)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (10:19.914)

outside of what the normal course of business is. Sorry about that.

That is so far outside of where the normal course of business lies, that it seems like we just grouped all of this stuff together to say, okay, here's the human stuff. But that's a terrible way to categorize it because there are so many different important distinctions in what that overall grouping is. And so what I would say is, you know, it seems like anything related to compensation, insurance, anything along those lines, that feels a lot more naturally fitting with finance.

anything with compliance, with complaints, sexual harassment, anything at all around things that could create liability for the organization, that very clearly belongs in legal. Like legal is a great Dean of students. We are scared of legal. And so if legal is responsible for driving that stuff, it's actually gonna be much more impactful. Being able to deal with financial people when we're worried about like our

Chad (11:02.853)

legal.

Chad (11:20.858)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (11:25.694)

insurance companies trying to screw us over like, yeah, that's what we want is like the aggro is in there who are going to get in there and solve stuff. So ultimately, what I think we need to do is break up HR according to what are the various functions that they play and think about realigning them with the goal being that HR should be about supporting the employee. We got to make HR into the guidance counselor. That's the part that is missing within our organizations. Who is there to make sure that the employees are doing all right?

And that's where HR belongs in my opinion.

Chad (11:56.89)

Well, on the talent side too, you take a look at we've broken talent acquisition away from talent management. And to be quite frank, it should be a fluid talent lifecycle, right? It should be the acquisition of talent, bringing them in, engaging them, developing them, and then moving them up or out, right? I mean, that's what we should be doing. And in many cases, I mean, they're gonna move out on.

They're going to move out on their own as much as we have to push them out or up as well, right? But yeah, I see where there's, it's almost like HR to some extent was like a catch all.

Jordan Birnbaum (12:35.992)

And it shouldn't be, you with regards to talent acquisition, I'll tell you something else too. This is one where we could go even a little bit further down a rabbit hole. like, I feel as though talent acquisition, it belongs more in the BUs. Like the more specialized you are in that business, I feel like the more effective you're gonna be at finding the right kind of talent. And so whether or not we cap someone's job at recruiting,

Chad (12:44.101)

Mm.

Chad (12:54.16)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (13:04.262)

or that becomes part of some broader function embedded within a business unit. think that there are a lot of arguments to be made that if we integrate talent acquisition into the BUs as part of a re-imagined role that, to your point, stays much more connected to that talent when they come in, is involved in onboarding, is involved in performance management. Exactly.

Joel Cheesman (13:17.039)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (13:29.156)

or they understand the business.

Jordan Birnbaum (13:32.118)

So I think that that's another part of this whole reimagining.

Joel Cheesman (13:35.245)

What's the what's the tip of the spear in this happening because asking a department to become less powerful by eliminating or moving positions, it feels like it's not going to happen in HR. So where is this change going to come if it does come?

Jordan Birnbaum (13:53.582)

Well, so I don't know that I'm willing to accept the first premise because, know, something I'm going to tell a quick story and then I'll share with you why I'm telling it. And it's the story of Blockbuster and Netflix, right? Blockbuster was in one of the most dominant market positions of any company in any industry in history. Uh, oh yeah. Especially in late fees. Yeah. Very nice call out.

Joel Cheesman (14:14.383)

They got a lot of my money.

Chad (14:16.218)

Yeah. I always loved the manager's choice as well.

Jordan Birnbaum (14:22.4)

Netflix realizes though that there are so many problems with blockbusters customer experience from driving there to videos out of stock to returning to late fees. I mean, it's stuck. It was not a good experience. so Netflix comes up with this, you know, DVD by mail to solve for those problems. And it's a big hit. The problem for Netflix was that

Once they proved that this was a viable business model, there was nothing stopping Blockbuster from flipping a switch and sending a note to all 55 million of its subscribers saying, hey, you can now get your DVDs by mail if you'd like. And so they did. Netflix actually had gone in and pitched that they wanted to get purchased by Blockbuster for like hundred million dollars. And they got laughed out of the room. And Blockbuster said, why would we ever buy you? We can just do it. And so they did. But then along came...

Chad (15:07.578)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Jordan Birnbaum (15:16.448)

activist investors, I won't mention any names. And they said, are you telling me that you're gonna introduce a business model that will have us lose our late fees? Are a cash cow? Are you morons? Undo that program immediately. And they kibosh the DVD by mail program for Blockbuster, which gave Netflix a second life in which they then reinvented themselves by going from mail to streaming.

And now, you know, I think Blockbuster probably topped out under a billion dollars in their market cap. And I don't even know where Netflix is today, but I think the reason that that story is important is because it makes agility cool. And if you can make agility cool, people can get behind just about anything smart. And so I think that if we can make agility cool for HR practitioners,

Joel Cheesman (15:57.006)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (16:06.128)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (16:13.474)

The people who deal with comp, I think that they would love to be in finance. I think they would love the respect. I think that we would love to be with their number oriented peers. The people in compliance, I think would love to be in legal and be part of that archetype. And the HR practitioners to whom my heart goes out are the ones who really want to help people and now find themselves in a position where they're always conflicted between helping the organization versus helping the people. And so for them,

If we can tell them, your job is just help the people, I think they would love that too. So to me, this is one where everybody actually wins so long as we can like let go of our fiefdoms for a

Joel Cheesman (16:43.375)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (16:54.448)

very hard as human beings, as human beings.

Joel Cheesman (16:55.265)

I know I was going to say... You think a lot of people.

Jordan Birnbaum (16:57.486)

It doesn't mean it's worth the, we shouldn't aspire.

Chad (17:00.312)

Yeah, mean, that's the, I mean, and again, that's the hardest part is we get comfortable, right? And that's where things start going wrong is because we, in the uncomfortable is where we actually find innovation and we find solutions to problems. But when we're not looking for problems, because it's the way we always done it, right? I agree. I do like,

the idea, I don't know that I think that they should be like embedded in the business units, but I do believe that there should be individuals who are like concierge talent people who should be connected because there has to be, there has to be an underlining infrastructure that's being used from a technology standpoint because there's so many different pieces of tech on the talent side of the house, the people side of the house that, but those individuals, today we ask recruiters,

to be experts in all the different areas of the business and which means they know none of the business. Maybe, you know, pieces, parts here and there, but they're not experts in anything, right? And we need them to be experts in the business. Not just talent, but the business of talent. That's where, you know, again, the difference between staffing and talent acquisition is talent acquisition is staffing's business.

They make money off of that. know what that actually means when the rubber meets the road, they know what the revenue looks like, right? Town acquisition is their job and they don't go any further than that. So I do agree with that and I can see Joel wanting to rip in there.

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (18:48.163)

Hahaha!

Joel Cheesman (18:48.431)

hype dream is maybe too mean. It's but people change is scary, Jordan. And HR is probably the most risk averse of all the departments in the in portfolio. So a total redesign of HR sounds scary. What also sounds scary is I've been begging for a spot at the table. HR needs a spot at the table of the company.

Jordan Birnbaum (18:58.906)

yes,

Joel Cheesman (19:20.417)

if you dismantle it and make it less of what it was, it feels like that seat at the table gets further away. Help help me understand why I'm wrong in that and how it can maybe help them get to the table.

Jordan Birnbaum (19:37.816)

So it's so interesting. I think that part of the reason that it's so hard for HR to get a seat at the table is because, which part of HR? Are we going with risk management or are we going with talent development or what's the orientation of that senior leadership? And wouldn't that determine then who within the HR organization might actually get a seat at the table? And so I think that part of what my argument would be that by breaking this current

makeup of HR into the separate business functions that we both clear a path for the individuals within each of those functions to rise. But also we create the necessary seats at the table because getting HR a seat at the table, it's like, I don't know what that means. And that's entirely the problem. Like getting sales at the table, I know what that is. I know what client success is. I know what product management is. I know what R &D is. I don't know what HR is. I don't know if that means talent growth. I don't know if that means

employee engagement, performance, talent acquisition, training. There are so many different directions that you could take that that's a huge part of why there's no seat at the table because it's like 25 seats.

Chad (20:52.59)

So you take a look at business structure and I think it's interesting because Joe will ask, know, who's gonna make HR is not gonna make that decision. And to be quite frank, it's not up to HR, it's up to the CEO, it's up to the C-suite. So we've actually talked about Salesforce doing this new business. I believe it's with a Deco, isn't it? Where they've created this new company that is focused on being able to use agents to really do the staffing side of the house.

Jordan Birnbaum (21:04.163)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (21:21.488)

In in in that whole process of thought around that new model, I thought, holy shit, Salesforce doesn't need a Deco. They already have connections to the CRO who they who they sell directly to, right? The CMO, the CTO, the CPO, all of the people who are already at the table. You're already selling to them, right? And if you have a talent delivery structure.

in which you're delivering key talent to those individuals, you're literally bypassing that of talent acquisition. Now, you wanna have people embedded in your team who can actually have a concierge service around that. But I can see kind of like, let's say for instance, kind of like a straw man structure of what you're talking about. Is that what you're really kind of getting across is like, look, the structure's already there. The people who have seats at the table,

are gonna stay at fucking table. They don't have seats at the table, especially because they're so splintered from an HR standpoint, HR, TA, TM, I mean, all the way through payroll, et cetera, et then you can literally just go to where the power and the control already resides. Is that what I'm hearing that you're distilling?

Jordan Birnbaum (22:39.562)

If you are in compensation and benefits and you want to see it at the table, your best advocate is the CFO. If you are in compliance and you want to see it at the table, it's your general counsel is your seat at the table. And if you're in talent, you don't currently have a seat at the table because you're mushed together with all these other things. And so this might actually get talent a seat at the table, by breaking us down into these core functions.

Chad (22:42.737)

huh.

Chad (23:09.36)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (23:09.612)

My only point is that until we have clear archetypes around each of the business functions, this will be a mess. And that once we can identify what are the different archetypes that exist within HR and where do they belong naturally. And even if it means that HR becomes four different business units, which I don't advocate, but that would still be better than what we currently have because by

cramming them all together, we undermine them all. And it's one of the reasons why I think we've come to accept such low engagement scores. This idea that two out of three people not being into their jobs is normal and okay, that's crazy.

Joel Cheesman (23:53.081)

You'll appreciate a reference to the untouchables. Sean Connery, Kevin Costner. There's a scene in that movie where they're they're getting a new recruit to join the team. And the comment of if you want an apple, you get it from the tree, not the barrel. And I feel like HR is a whole lot of barrel apples where they've been around a long time. They've done it this way forever. Like change is not going to come from them. So my question is around generational.

Jordan Birnbaum (24:00.056)

worth.

Joel Cheesman (24:22.723)

challenges, like anyone that's in college school right now to learn HR and the business, they're learning probably old models and old archetypes around what it is. How important is the generational gap? How do you close it? And how do you make sure that the next generation of professionals have sort of your vision and not the old school vision?

Jordan Birnbaum (24:45.464)

Well, my vision comes from learning the exact same stuff. you know, maybe part of the solution isn't that we need to be teaching different things, but rather, you know, growing up in a technologically informed age has given each subsequent generation a new perspective on this stuff, which leads to ideas like this. You know, I think you're always going to have progressive and conservative within any band.

but my, again, my point is that, you know, on a certain level, if AI is coming and everything's getting recreated anyway, then well, this, we might as well take advantage of the moment, you know, like Lewin's whole change theory is like, first you got to unfreeze the ice before you can do anything. And that's what everybody always forgets to do. Well, AI is unfreezing the ice. So we're going to have just like COVID did COVID

Joel Cheesman (25:34.351)

Mm-hmm.

Jordan Birnbaum (25:41.07)

You know, unfroze the ice and it allowed us create an entirely new reality. AI is about to unfreeze the ice. So I guess what I'm suggesting is, is that we take advantage of it by thinking about HR, not in terms of traditional HR, but about what are the different functions and archetypes within HR. And let's start thinking about each one of those individually instead of as a group, because that is leading to endless amounts of problems.

Joel Cheesman (26:12.375)

Ultimately, AI might add a lot of layers to this that you don't have to put finance together. That's just AI is going to... The new HR person is going to have a hand on all the AI tools and they're going to, I think, house that within and not have this whole sort of deconstruction of the department. That's my own two cents. Yeah.

Chad (26:12.441)

It seems like.

Chad (26:32.889)

or could actually hasten it if you think about it because it could be easier to actually put some of those pieces into the CFO's hands or the CRO's hands or what have you. And just taking a look at the talent acquisition side of the house, once again, as Jordan had pointed out, being able to actually have talent experts in your space who's not just focused on talent acquisition but also the onboarding, just the concierge services.

Joel Cheesman (26:42.703)

Sure.

Chad (27:02.564)

being able to be that counselor per se around the career. And that's why a lot of people leave their jobs. They've got shitty managers and they have, which is a horrible experience. But if you have concierge service that also helps develop where you can see your path in the company, which most people can't see. And then you're actually getting the development, the training and those types of things. know, there could be, this could be a different answer.

But back to Joel's question, who makes that decision? Because to be quite frank, I don't think the CEO, most CEOs fucking understand how important talent is. They say it left and right, but we're still low balling talent. We're still paying them a hell of a lot less. We're still treating them like shit. We're still not providing a clear.

career paths. I mean, we're not doing any of these things that we should be doing to be able to keep that talent. So to me, the CEOs are full of shit when they say that they believe talent is the number one thing on the list. What's your thought around that? Because again, if it's going to change, it's going to have to come from the top. And I don't think the top knows what the fuck is going on.

Jordan Birnbaum (28:16.918)

So there's a couple of different big questions hovering here. so I think the first is like, well, is AI gonna take everybody's job anyway, rendering this entire conversation moot? And maybe, but I just don't understand how we're going to make it as a society.

If we let AI take everyone's jobs, don't know why it would stop at the C, why couldn't it be the CFO and why couldn't it be the CEO? then eventually why wouldn't it just be AI selling and selling to and buying from itself on LinkedIn? And we're just all gonna sit home and play video games. I don't understand what kind of society we'll have if that happens.

Chad (29:01.612)

one fueled by universal basic income. That's the one.

Joel Cheesman (29:05.775)

Fembots and OnlyFans, Jordan, is the future.

Jordan Birnbaum (29:05.932)

that maybe.

Jordan Birnbaum (29:10.094)

But, but assuming that human beings will continue to sell and buy, uh, to and from each other, then I think, um, our next bet's bet is just to figure out, right, then how do we optimize our experience of work using AI to help us to operationalize the unbearable stuff and, you know, spend more time in the really valuable stuff and then also spend less time working.

Joel Cheesman (29:14.178)

huh.

Jordan Birnbaum (29:37.334)

and get back to an actual work-life balance.

Joel Cheesman (29:40.461)

Maybe get back to drinking a little bit. Jordan, you have a cute little cocktail description of all these hierarchies and archetypes, etc. Just what's your favorite cocktail?

Jordan Birnbaum (29:54.508)

I am a vodka tonic kind of guy. mean, I will, I'm a margarita. I really enjoy margaritas too, especially when my wife and I go out, like we'll do margaritas together and there's just something fun about that. But yeah, like I would say that like in a pinch, I'm a vodka tonic guy.

Joel Cheesman (29:58.489)

Simple man, simple man.

Chad (30:03.833)

on the beach.

Joel Cheesman (30:14.947)

Fair enough, fair enough.

Chad (30:16.25)

That's too easy. Jordan Birnbaum everybody. And Jordan, if somebody wants to connect with you, talk about these crazy deconstruction ideas. Where could they find you?

Jordan Birnbaum (30:28.974)

Glendagroup.com, one word, or Jordan Birnbaum on LinkedIn. And you can even find me on Psychology Today. if you search for my name, you'll get all my articles and you'll decide whether or not you think I'm crazy.

Joel Cheesman (30:45.241)

That's Glenda with an I, the good witch. And this is the good podcast. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.

Chad (30:52.634)

We out.