Ep 144 AI: Your Company Decided Your Value Before AI Existed

AI didn't build the case to replace you. It just gave companies the tool to finally act on a decision they'd already made.

In this episode, Stephen Gates gets brutally honest about what's actually happening underneath the wave of creative layoffs — and why asking "is AI going to take my job?" is already the wrong question. Using a framework he's shared with teams and mentors for over fifteen years, Stephen maps out the four quadrants that determine your real value inside any organization: human-led execution, AI-led execution, AI-amplified strategy, and human-led strategy — and explains exactly why where you sit in that grid matters more than any performance review, portfolio, or title ever will.

He also goes back to the moment that changed how he thinks about all of this: getting laid off while his work was running globally in an Apple commercial. Good work isn't enough. Great execution isn't enough. What matters is what gets said about you when you're not in the room.

This is an uncomfortable episode — but it's the one you need to hear.

In this episode:

• Why AI gave companies cover fire, not a new idea
• The four-quadrant framework for understanding how leadership actually thinks about your role
• Why "do you value design?" is the wrong question to ask your leadership
• The question that will actually tell you where you stand
• What to do if you don't like the answer

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Transcript

Hook: Getting Laid Off Mid-Success

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I've been laid off three times in my career. One of those times, I got laid off with my work running globally in an Apple commercial. I was literally sitting in the middle of one infinite loop at Apple, having lunch, meeting with the executives there, whenever it happened. And so for me, it's something that I hold on to every day to remind me what my value is, to remind me what I'm worth, to remind me what really matters and what doesn't whenever I'm doing my work. And I also, whenever I do this show, and a lot of times, sometimes it feels like I've covered topics. Sometimes it feels like I've talked about things enough that I shouldn't have to come back to them. But then I have to remind myself not everybody listens to every episode. Sometimes things fade. So today, what I want to do is to bring back an old topic and update it. Because what I want to talk about is what actually gets you replaced, what actually puts your career in jeopardy and understanding what your value is in an exercise that I use with so many people I mentor in so many companies that really I think helps clarify what your value really is. And in this new age of AI, in this age of sort of depreciating expertise, are you in trouble or not? So, welcome to the 144th episode of the Crazy One Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Steven Gates. This is a show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and everything else that matters to creative people. Now, standard thing, right? Like, look, leave a review, subscribe, share with a friend. Because I think that it's good content, trying to make the show shorter, make it easier to consume. But that's the thing, right? Is that, you know, I think this is an uncomfortable time for everybody. You know, what is going on? What does my company think of me? Am I going to get replaced by an agent doing a lot of these sort of things? And that's the question I get asked. Not it probably this be point, not even every week, probably every day, right? Is AI gonna take my job? And I gotta be honest, right? In a lot of cases, I think it may be the wrong question. And if you're asking the question, you probably have a hunch that you are in danger. And I would say in a lot of cases, that maybe that question is honestly maybe coming a little bit too late. Because the real question is what does your company already believe about your role or your team before AI showed up that led you to feeling like you're in danger, right? Because here's the case: in a lot of cases, AI didn't build that case to replace you, it just gave the company a tool to execute the decision they've already made. And I think that's the thing is for a lot of creatives, that's really why they don't like AI. Because for a long time we had this feeling like companies didn't value what we did. Well, now I think that that do they, don't they is super clear. Because here's the thing is that again, you know, for me, what is it, seven or eight years ago, when I was back at Envision, for the one year it was relevant and the two years that it wasn't, right? Like we did the largest study ever done that looked at kind of like the impact of creativity and design on corporate culture and corporate success. And the numbers have always been clear, right? Like high IQ, high creativity, high design companies just perform better. Those numbers have been out there for decades, right? It's nothing new. But that alone didn't change anything. And the big warning sign that we saw then, the thing that I talked about then to everybody that would listen was whenever we would actually go through and map the teams, what we would see is 83% of the world's companies scored in the middle to the bottom of the creative kind of maturity scale that we had created. And again, that wasn't a prediction, that wasn't a red flag, that was reality. That was where companies were already operating from. And that was, again, seven or eight years ago. So AI didn't change the perceived value of creativity. I think what AI did in a lot of cases, it removed the friction for acting, acting on sort of changing its value or getting there. And again, that's what I mean. Is so I always go back to the fact that, like, look, whenever I was at Starwood, we just had come off a run of eight keynotes, right? We were one of the first outside teams to work on Apple Watch. We're one of the two feature partners, us and Nike, were the two featured case studies. And even then, the board decided they wanted to sell the company to Marriott. I was identified as a quote unquote, you know, risk because I was outspoken. I was deemed a security risk. So whenever they laid me off, they actually canceled my credit card, they canceled my flight home that couldn't see my team. I had to go get my stuff after. Like a whole bunch of just like for being there nine years, for having that success, that was the outcome, right? Like literally went to go pick up my things because they'd cleaned up my office. They spelled my name wrong on the box, right? So, yes, it's a moment I'm bitter about because they took something great away from me. But it's something I've never let go of, right? I'm not ruled by it, I'm not bitter by it anymore. But again, I think that what it let me see is where in this area is that for a lot of companies, as we talk about AI washing and things like that, what AI did was it gave companies the cover fire to be able to downsize designers, to devalue what we do. It didn't give them the idea, right? And I think that's where we need to be clear. In a lot of cases, we're pointing at the tools, right? That's the conversation, is kind of like, oh, well, the tool is going to replace me. And again, like that's the thing, is that companies that replaced creatives with uh AI had already classified those roles as kind of a commoditized production resource, right? AI didn't create that classification, it just made it cheaper and faster to act on. That's why the layoffs are happening so fast, that's why there's so little pushback internally, right? Because again, the the decision was quiet. It happened a while ago, and it was almost never communicated to the people that were affected. And again, and I think that's where we have to own our piece of this. That again, it's it's not just a leadership failure, it's a systemic one. And we own a big piece of that in terms of how do we actually think about this. And for a long time, and I think this is the part where I'm like, okay, look, I need to bring back some of the information because whenever I would go in and I'd work with creative teams, whenever I talk to people about their careers and they're struggling, they're not getting promoted, the team isn't getting headcount, they're not getting funding. I would always start with just kind of a real simple graph. And there was a line that went through the middle of it of just we would say, look, this horizontal line is value. This is how your company defines value. And that anything below the line was something they didn't see value in. Anything above the line was something they did. Now, the reality is that I've long argued that I don't think any real company actually values design, right? They see it as an output, they see it as a commodity. Whereas creativity, strategy, thinking, the ability to do those sort of things, while uncomfortable, while yes, there is attention, the corporate culture and creativity rarely like to coexist, that if you're able to do that, then they see strategic value in what that is, right? They it's something that they look at and say, okay, there is value there, we'll invest in it, we need it. There's a competitive differentiator there, right? And again, not all companies, but the smart ones, the ones that succeed. Well, now we have not just the are you in the bottom part of this and is your team or are you seen as a commodity, often based in execution and things like that. But, or are you in the top half of it, where again, you're seen as a strategic asset, you're seen as somebody that really brings value. Well, that was sort of just the horizontal, right? Like, are you above the line? Are you below the line? And in almost every case, if you're below the line, that's why the team was struggling. Like it was easy for us to be able to map the problems from there. Well, now we have the introduction of sort of this human-led versus AI-led conversation overlaid on top of that. So what had been just sort of a two-quadrant chart has now turned into a four-quadrant chart. So again, I think part of this is probably a remnant of my time in corporate culture that I kind of feel like you can explain any problem with a four-quadrant chart. But here's the thing: the way that I've been thinking of it is so now if we have strategy at the top, so the areas where they see value, and we have execution at the bottom. And I'll I'll put this chart up on LinkedIn or social media whenever I do this to try to make this a little bit easier to visualize. So strategy at the top, execution at the bottom. We now have AI-led work at the right, and human-led work at the left. So strategy top, execution bottom, AI-led right, human-led left. So now what we have is in the bottom left-hand quadrant, we have human-led execution. And again, I think this is the case where you know this is something where, you know, most companies will operate in a place where what I again, I think this is the brutal truth for us, right? Is that we have been in this quadrant of human-led execution for too long. It is slow, it is expensive, it's hard to scale, it often has uncertain outcomes, right? Of just, you know, because most companies like certainty. This is why creativity and corporate culture struggle to coexist. One likes predictable outcomes, one likes repeatable models, and creativity isn't that. I think this is why so many agencies and consultancies have been struggling because they are in this old model quadrant of human-led execution. So now we have the new quadrant that's been introduced to this of AI-led execution. And right now we're all very, you know, we're all very execution drunk. We're all very enamored with how quickly we can do things and how we can produce things that sound smart. But for me, this is going to be a quadrant that's going to be table stakes because this is about production, iteration, volume, speed, and things that candidly, there's not going to be any real value there. I think it's going to be table stakes. It's going to just simply become a part of the tool set once this new AI smell wears off. And so again, I think that, you know, the teams that are struggling right now, that are the ones that are being affected by layoffs, by understanding kind of what that is, are the ones that are stuck in these bottom two modules. And again, like I said, that this isn't a new problem. I've been standing on stage and talking about this and showing this chart for 15 years. And that this is the problem, right? Like if you're in those bottom two boxes, if you're in the human-led execution, AI-led or AI augmented execution, the problem that you often have is that nobody tells you that you're in those boxes, right? Nobody tells you those that you have those sort of problems. And so again, and I think this is often our problem. And I think this is the truth that a lot of people usually don't want to hear, is that we own kind of both sides of this problem, right? We spent years talking about our work in terms of deliverables and pixels and output. And that we trained people to put us into these boxes, right? That was all we saw our value as. And right, like leadership has never been able to connect our work to a business outcome, to a revenue line, to reducing risk, to the things that they care about. This was why kind of the pendulum has swung away from design thinking and a lot of these sort of things, because they just they invested in it, they tried it, and they couldn't connect the dots on this. So again, I think that like, look, they didn't decide that we're all replaceable out of malice. They decided that because nothing better ever showed up to prove otherwise. And I think that's on, look, that's not all on us, but we definitely own a good piece of it. And I think this is where for me, where I'm trying to share as much as I can, get in front of as many teams as I can, work with as many teams as I can. Because what we have to do is get everybody into what are going to be the top two boxes. So as we now move to the top and to the right, now we have AI-led strategy. Now, this is where we have research, right? We have patterns, we have exploring and prototyping at speed. This is also where probably is the biggest place where this plausible noise gets generated, is in this AI-amplified thinking quadrant. Now, again, this comes with a lot of other things that we're going to get into around like the models you work with and how do you do it and like what are the cultural issues. But for today, let's let's just keep it simpler, right? We have that that AI amplified thinking, and that's where some people are starting to dabble in. And then for me, we have what is the top left-hand quadrant, which is human-led strategy. This is the vision, the strategy where taste and judgment and experience come into play. And for me, this is the non-negotiable. But this is where, again, where you are in this is going to play such a big role. This is where plausible noise can erode what that is. And and I and look, and I think as I go through and start to think about this, I'm thinking about it because I see threats to what I do, to my career, to those sort of things. But but here's here's what I think is often the hardest truth. The thing that I struggle with the most, the thing that keeps me up most at night is look, I think most creatives actually have no idea how leadership actually thinks about their role. And and look, I think that for a lot of us we might have a hunch. And what I'm talking about is is not what's on an org chart, right? Like, not what do you report, like who do you report into and those sort of things, but it's what gets said about you or your team or your org when you're not there. How are you talked about in the decisions for headcount and for money and for outcome and for who's going to be leading what's comes next? Because that was the thing where I go back to that Apple store and why I hold on to that. Good work should be enough, right? Good execution should be enough. And I think that in a lot of cases, you can do the best work of your career, you can do massive like revenue generating work, and you can still end up in the wrong column. And that's what I mean. I think that's why I go back to it is like what that moment with Apple taught me is like, look, you can do globally recognized work in a global campaign and still get thrown out the door. That even in the face of all of that again, that sometimes even if you're doing that work, it doesn't matter because what they value and what I was providing or the threat that they saw me as were two different conversations. And I think that's that's the part that I always want to come back to, and that's why I keep raising this point is like the work on its own is never enough on its own. It never has been. It's an easier conversation, it's an easier skill set to learn. But I think that, you know, for me, there the lot of us need to be going through and kind of not just looking at isn't, you know, is an agent going to replace me, is AI going to replace me, but stepping back and asking what we are so good at asking, but rarely do for ourselves, why? Why would they do it? And so for me, I think in a lot of cases, look, you need to go have that conversation that you've been avoiding. And look, this is not the going to your boss, going to your CEO, going to whoever it is, and saying, Look, do you value design? It's the wrong question because that question, 98% of the time, candidly, is gonna get a polite lie.

unknown 16:40

Right?

Self-Reflection and What to Do Next

Close

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Oh, yeah, no, of course we do. Absolutely. You guys are great, right? Like you guys are fantastic, and then you get laid off three days later. Right? They're just you're not gonna get the answer to that. You need to ask a different question. And for me, I think that that's where for me I shifted to do you value design to starting to ask, like, look, where do you see the work that we or I do fitting into these strategic decisions that this company is making? And now again, this isn't, you know, and look, I think this is where a lot of us got into trouble. That even if you ask that, I think that's a good barometer to tell you where you're at. But it's also that whenever you get the opportunity, you have to show up in a way that actually contributes value. Because, and and look, I think whenever you say where do you see us fitting in, the answer to that's gonna tell you everything. The the answer or the lack of an answer and the discomfort in the answer is gonna tell you exactly what column you're in. If you don't like the answer, then you know you need to start working to change that. You need to start being able to, again, show your thinking, talk about the strategy, tracking the business impact, right? Like doing those sort of things. Even if you are being handed a solution to be validated, you have to back it into a problem to be solved. To be able to say, hey, you know, you wanted this, whatever it is, like an email that had this content. What we saw that the problem was is that this is what we're actually trying to communicate. This is the outcomes that we need. And so again, that was the thinking that we did, and here are some ways that we can solve that. That it has to be that shift that if we stay in the executional space, those spaces, through multiple iterations, are the ones that always get disrupted. It's true with desktop printing, it was true with the internet. It is really true now. But I think this is the uncomfortable part of this conversation, not many of us want to have. Is that it's not as AI going to replace us, but what is the value that I've built? What is the value that this company perceives that would allow that decision to finally get greenlit. And again, I think that that's the thing is like, look, nobody wants to believe that the company you've given everything for has already made up their mind about them, right? Like, nobody wants to believe that that's going to be the case. This is why, again, several years ago, I did the episode that was about that we are in the era of defensive employment. That the era of thinking that the company is going to take care of you and do that stuff is long gone, right? Long dead. But you have to go into this with eyes wide open. You have to go in because that's so many of the conversations that I get into, and so many of the people I mentor, that's the other truth. Whenever we really get down to it, they've built a career out of what the company or the industry would give them. And in many cases, it was decisions and roles, and the way they classified them was things they didn't like, right? It didn't have the value. And they were okay with that because it was, it felt like a step in the road or more salary or whatever that was, right? Like it felt like an advancement. But I think that this is the moment where it's like, look, either we need to figure this stuff out, we need to wake up what this is, or we're gonna get blindsided. And I think that's the part where I'm gonna ask everybody to do that self-reflection, to go find out, to ask those uncomfortable questions. Because at some point the decision is gonna come, right? And I think we need to decide what are we going to do about it? Is there a place where I can shift the narrative, or do I need to find some place that's going to value this? Do I need to be able to continue to invest here and fight for what this is? Or do I need to start sharpening my skills and start networking because the market is such a mess? And look, I think there's going to be a course correction. I think that right now we are very execution drunk. Right now we are very, we're very much in love with the things that we can do, and we're all very much in love with sounding smart because a lot of us have built cultures where sounding smart is enough. Right? I still know so many people who build very profitable careers over no discernible skills outside of stealing the right work and kind of kissing the right ass. And they're able to rise through the ranks. A lot of cultures that value that. And again, I think that's a big part of the problem. But I think that's where that's going to be the other part of this story is that those companies are going to get into trouble because there is going to be, because of the plausible noise debt, because of these sort of things, this is going to build up and start to have real issues that are going to start to ask, you know, get the leadership to start to ask real questions. And they've already started, right? Why aren't we seeing the returns on AI? You know, why did we fire this whole team and why am I not seeing the return on what this is? But I think just understanding this simple thing, right? That like, look, it's not that AI is going to necessarily take your job. It's that, you know, has your company already decided what you're worth? And it's just given them the reason to pull the trigger on a decision while short sighted, that again is something for them. And again, I think this is this is that hard self reflection I think we need to start doing. And that's what I want you to sit down and think about is like, look, you know, which of these four boxes are you in, and how do you start? To move that needle. But that's my thing is like, look, I hope this is helpful. If you've got questions or thoughts or things like that, as always, share them. You know, but like I said, you know, share those with your friends. Try to try to be the one that's also helping not just yourself but other people try to figure this out because I think there's a lot of people out there that have these bad feelings. A lot of people are scared and they don't know what to do. And like I said, this is the best starting point that I've figured out so far on how to try to figure that out. So that's the thing, right? Is to try to really think through that. But look, go find out, have the tough conversations, do some self reflection, and as always, stay crazy.