Authors in August: Dave Ulrich & "The Why of Work"

In this episode of Motley Fool Rule Breaker Investing, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner speaks with Dave Ulrich, author of The Why of Work. Using this longtime favorite book, their conversation ranges widely across:

• What gives work meaning?
• What do great leaders understand about people?
• What makes work worth doing?
• What brings out the best in people?
• How might we create workplaces that leave employees, customers, and the world better off?

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Aug. 19, 2026.

David Gardner: August has brought us three very different thinkers, asking three very human questions. Thi Nguyen asked, “What happens when somebody else's score starts determining what we value?” Last week, Vasant Dhar asked, “How should we think alongside machines that are increasingly capable of thinking for themselves?” This week, closing out our ninth Authors in August, we come to something most of us spend an enormous portion of our lives doing. Work. Of course, we work to earn a living to support ourselves and the people we love, but given how much of our one precious life we spend working. Can we ask more of it than a paycheck? Can work give us meaning, connection, even joy? What happens to all of that as AI, remote work, and the changing world reshape work itself? Well, my guest this week is Dave Ulrich, who spent decades studying these questions. He joins me to revisit a longtime favorite book of mine. His book, along with his wife, Wendy Ulrich, The Why of Work. How can we make work work better for people, for businesses, and for the world they serve? Dave Ulrich, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Thanks for joining me here in the dead of Summer, the Dog Days of August, those of us in the Northern hemisphere. I want to mention just before welcoming on, Dave Ulrich, that next week is your mailbag. If you find yourself challenged, moved, or inspired by our conversation this week, I'd love to hear back from you on the Rule Breaker Investing Mailbag. Our email address is rbi@fool.com. Of course, this special month, three books, The Score by Thi Nguyen his compelling subtitle How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. Then last week, Vasant Dhar, as I mentioned earlier, Thinking with Machines. Then this week, Dave and Wendy Ulrich, The Why of Work. I'd love to hear back from you about anything that truly caused you to think different as a consequence of this month of August.

My guest today is Dave Ulrich. Someone who has spent decades asking how people and organizations can work better. Then writing down what he's learned. Dave is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and a partner at the RBL group. He's worked with more than half of the Fortune 200 across more than 80 countries and written more than 30 books and 200 articles and book chapters. In fact, Dave sent me a wonderful image yesterday laying out his books from the year 1990-2026 under one big heading “Books on Human Capability.” I love that phrase because it captures the larger subject of his life's work, not simply HR, but what enables human beings and the organizations we create together to become more capable. Well, among those many books is a longtime favorite of mine, written with his wife, Wendy, as I've mentioned, The Why of Work. Dave Ulrich, welcome to Rule Breaker Investing.

Dave Ulrich: David, thank you so much. You made me tired by reading that biography. I'm already worn out.

David Gardner: I even want to pin one more thing to it, Dave, you mentioned you've not been writing as many books in the last decade because you discovered LinkedIn about 10 years ago, and every Tuesday morning, faithfully, you've posted your latest thoughts on the Evolving World of Human Resources, and that itself you and I offline beforehand, we're talking about how I'm trying to do a podcast every week and you're trying to do an essay every week, and you and I have both been keeping it going 10-plus years.

Dave Ulrich: By the way, that neither of us have much of a life. But in addition to that, [LAUGHTER] I think it's fun to get people who are creative. I'm assuming your podcast is not an AI podcast. You're not an avatar. I don't use AI to write my columns. I think sometimes it's really good to see behind the scenes to get in the heads of the people who are doing the work, which is what you do with your Rule Breaker sessions, and what's behind it? It's not an AI phenomena. We're not avatars. We're not algorithms. In fact, a quick anecdote, then we'll get into the discussion. I found out that some of the people commenting on LinkedIn were using only AI. I'd go back and forth, and finally, I ran through. What percent of this is AI with 98%. It was all AI. I've decided, I don't want to get into a debate with an algorithm. It's not going to end well for me, and the algorithm doesn't care. I love that this is live. We'll make verbal mistakes that Bart won't fix. But you know what? That's part of the humanity that we learn and people don't break rules by doing what's been expected.

David Gardner: I love it.

Dave Ulrich: Innovation requires trying new things. Anyway, I'm so delighted to join you, and your work in Motley Fool has been a guide for many of us. I should have followed your investment advice. I confess to not being smart enough. But thanks so much for letting me join you today.

David Gardner: It is a delight, Dave, and your work has influenced me in lots of ways. The Motley Fool culture, which has won awards at different points in our history, is informed by a lot of the things that you have put out there and your impact and your influence. You and Wendy's influence is just remarkable worldwide. I am honored that you're joining with us this week. I was just checking it. The Why of Work, I think, came out in 2010. Let me start, Dave, by asking. Since we're going to start this as a book interview, I don't know where we'll end up. We'll probably talk about AI and other things, too. But if you were writing The Why of Work for the first time now in 2026. What chapter might you add? I'm not asking you to review the actual table of contents, but in your brain, what would you find yourself writing about now? I know you've done it on LinkedIn, but what is book-worthy here in 2026?

Dave Ulrich: There are so many things. In The Why of Work, we try to say, Organizations matter. Let me just give a little test I've done when I teach. What do these things have in common? A shirt, a headset, a couch, a fireplace, a house, the food you eat, and people: Go. What are you talking about? Is this some kind of game? The answer is, they're all brought to you by an organization. Everything around us, the microphone, the headset, the glasses, the tone, the food, the school we go to, organizations are one of the dominant forces in our lives, and they can be for good or for not good. Many of us have been part of good organizations. We call that an abundant organization, and we've been part of crappy organizations, which fill in the blank, organization, fill in the blank. How do you make that organization good? That was our question in Why of Work. Organizations where work gets done and not work.

Families are probably the central organization. New grandfathers have a legacy that they try to live with and grow and build that legacy organization. My wife, who's a psychologist and tries to understand how people work in themselves. I'm an organizational thinker in some ways. We came together and said, How do you build an organization where work can get done in a more effective way? It's not only the public accouterments. It's the private passions that exist in an organization. That's a long story. But that's where The Why of Work came from. The funny thing, my wife writes books in psychology, the intersection of psychology and religion. I write books on organization. One of my friends, when they read The Why of Work 15 years ago, they said, Wow, this book reads very different. Did your wife write it? Which I thought was actually funny. She's a better writer than me, but we want to build an organization that creates all the things around us, the food we eat, the schools we go to, the cars we drive. How do you build those that give people a sense of abundance? That continues today. That was true in 2010. It was true in 2016. It was probably true even in 1910 and 1810. That's what we're looking at.

David Gardner: I love the word abundance. I have an abundance mentality, and I often contrast that with a trade-off mentality where people present an either-or, and I’m always like, but what about both ends? I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit more, but I did just want to stick with the abundance of organizations, specifically all the things around us that we wear, eat. You so eloquently, I love your question to your class because it connects directly with what we've been saying at The Motley Fool for 35 years now, which is pointing out to anybody who's willing to listen that the things that are around you, the abundant blessings that we have around us, you can be a part owner of the organizations that manufacture many of those things, both products and services, Dave. What you just said is straight out of chapter and verse Motley Fool thinking because we're trying to turn as many people as possible worldwide onto the idea that we actually can all be part owners in an ownership culture, thanks to the miracle of the stock market.

Dave Ulrich: By the way, it not only applies to the miracle of the stock market, but we have research. It says, Those organizations that have more, whatever term you use, abundance, a positive culture, whatever you call it, they do better over time. They still may fail. You may make bad decisions, and those things happen. But over time, that internal investment in your people and your organization, the human capability, it's an intangible value that shows up, and investors care about that because that's the investment. You're not just investing in a product, but you're investing in the process that created the product. That process is around the people and the organization that made it happen. This is a huge issue for investors. The intangible value of organizations, there's a lot of weird research out there, but it's often 60-90%.

One of the cool exercises, and this gets into the abundant stuff, two firms in the same industry both earn 100. They've got an earnings of 100. Do they have the same market value? The answer is no. Firm A may have a deficit culture, whatever you want to call it, and you feel it quickly. It doesn't take long to feel a bad culture. Go to a restaurant, go to a grocery store, go to a car dealer, and you feel it. Firm Z has an abundant culture. You go, Wow, I'd rather invest in A, and it shows up in that intangible value. This is not only a nice to do. We're not just social workers. This has got an economic impact, and that intangible value is a huge piece of what investing is about today.

David Gardner: Indeed, I quote that from your work. You once did a study among many other things you've written entitled, Why the Bottom Line Isn't where you did point out that half or more of the market value of companies is related to intangibles. I just want you to know that this is something I have pursued for decades as an investor, because in my experience, and anybody listening to the podcast already knows this, in my experience, the very best things and most important things that drive value in business do not have numbers attached to them on the financial statements. Therefore, all of the best companies look overvalued because they're trading at this crazy multiple of earnings or cash flow, but earnings and cash flow don't know who the CEO is, for better or for worse. They don't know the innovative capability or not of that organization. They don't know the culture. The list goes on of the intangibles, Dave.

You don't have to read my book. I've read yours, Dave, but you don't have to read my book because you already know my book. I'm quoting you in there because it's such a critical point that Wall Street misses, and often people end up not buying the best companies of our time, the best organizations, as you said, because they look overvalued by traditional measures that are missing much of what's really important in business.

Dave Ulrich: This is going to be the easiest interview I've ever done. All I have to do is say, Amen. [LAUGHTER] Just share your thinking, and I'll say amen, because that's the message. It's such a good exercise to pick two companies in the same industry, and I won't do an example and say, Look up their price earnings ratio. They earn the same. One gets a 20, the other gets a 15. I’ve gone into CEOs, and one CEO I went into, and I said, Oh, man, you’re worth $40 billion. You're trading at 10% less than your competitors in the same industry. That's $4 billion that you're costing the company. One executive said, Why are you telling me that? I said, Because I'm an investor. That's 10% of $4 billion. One great executive looked at me, and he said, Why do you think you're here? If you can't help me solve that problem, I want my investment to be equal at par with the others in terms of the intangible value. We found just really quickly for those because many are investors and entrepreneurs.

We found that about 35-40% of the value of a company is economic return. You got to make money. Thirty to 35% with strategy, business you're in, today, if you're in the AI business, you're going to be well ahead or space business and 25-30% is organization and people. It may not be that. If you don't make money over time, it's not going to work. If don't you're not the right business, but that 25-30%, by the way, in our statistics, has got the most variability because good investors can predict financial performance. You can pick an algorithm to read this balance sheet. Strategy, you can manage that figuring out, and that's going to get us into the abundant stuff. Does this organization have the right stuff? Is all of that intangible culture people soft stuff? How do I know it's the right stuff? There's a lot of variability in that. I believe it's a differentiator in great investing.

David Gardner: I completely agree. Amen did that. I now want to share another Amen moment because one of my favorite questions in the whole book, The Why of Work, is this one. Are you hiring employees your customers would want you to hire?

Dave Ulrich: Let me tell you where it came from. I love the fractals, the anecdotes, because I'm in a utility firm, and I won't name it, obviously. We're with the executive team, and they're putting in place somebody. I said, so let me ask a question, if the customers of this utility traditional industry could pick the 10 of you to run the company, how many of you 10 would they pick? [LAUGHTER] One of the executives said, How could they do that, they don't know us? I said, There's an insight. [LAUGHTER] You had to go get known, and if they knew you, would they have more or less confidence in investing in the company? I just think that is such a simple question.

Imagine if we're hiring recently happened big technology firm hiring a chief information officer. They're down to their last two candidates, both of whom are eminently qualified technically. You do the background, they've got all the skills. I said to the group during the hiring, which one of those would you have more confidence sitting in front of your key customers with no text, no staff, face to face, knee to knee, eyeball to eyeball? Which of those would you feel confident about? The woman in charge of the hiring team said, Oh, wow, there is a difference. I said, I'm not going to tell you who to hire. That's not my job. But the customer expectation and confidence should be a North Star. It should be a key factor. As long as they both have technical competence, if one is not competent, but she said, Wow. I've never thought that through. It's not complicated. You're an entrepreneur. Your company's future is based on the people you bring in. Which of those people you brought in in the last six months are you comfortable representing your baby, your company? Because this is your family. This is your child, your grandchild. Which of those folks would you love to have represent you to not only the customers, but also the investors, either debt or equity? If you're going, Wow, I wouldn't really trust him or her. Pause. I got to do something about that. Again, everybody says, this is really complicated. It requires algorithms and heavy statistics, and I love statistics. This doesn't require algorithms. This requires good judgment and thinking carefully.

David Gardner: Are you hiring employees your customers would want you to hire? It is a surprisingly radical thought, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it's so straightforward. It just seems to be the soundest form of judgment explicated fairly simply. A related favorite line Dave is make sure that what you want to be known for, is what your target customer cares about. This reminds me that so much of the focus of your work is a view of human resources, a view of the people or culture of a company outward in. You basically are looking at companies through the customer's eyes, saying, What I want you to hire that employee, do I appreciate what you stand for and what you're known for to your point, if you're even known for anything at all, the power of branding and brands.

Dave Ulrich: I've got to highlight. It's so delightful to hear you talk about that. Of course, you're talking about our book, so I’m double delightful, but I'm doing a talk with a whole lot of senior business leaders, and I say, I want to talk about culture, and I can hear the collective groan. Bring a friend to work. It's your pet day. It's free Saturday, free Friday. Don't wear a tie. Or let's go do a set of values. We're going to put values on the wall, and we're going to have an away day, and we'll come up with our values. I said, Let me give you another view. How many of your companies have a value statement? Ninety percent. Yeah, we've got them. Collaboration service. I said, Let me take you through three steps. Step 1. What are the values we have that we want to be known for? Got it. Step 2. Take those to your customer. Say to your customer, Do you believe in service? Do you believe in collaboration? Do you believe in innovation? Is that what you want us to be known for? By the way, here's the great test. One company said, Well, my No. 1 value is to be the most profitable firm in my industry. I said, Here's a test. Take that to your customer. [LAUGHTER] They're going to go, No, that's not what we want you to be known for. Step 1, you have a set of values, collaboration, innovation, creativity, whatever it is. Step 2, what are the behaviors that go with those values that you would see? What does service mean to you? What does innovation mean to you, the customer? Step 3. Step 1, are these the values you want us to be known for? Step 2, what are the behaviors you need to see that we live them? Step 3, when we do those behaviors, will you buy more from us? All of a sudden, the eyes of 1,000 business executives went, "Time out, let's go back."

Culture isn't bringing a pet to work. Culture is, will the values we live in the mind of the customer get them to buy more? Somebody said, "That's a brand." I said, your brand is your culture. If your external brand doesn't reflect your internal culture, why do you have an internal culture? Our identity inside should reflect the promises we make outside, and those three steps are so simple. You go to your customer and say, "Are these the values you want us to have?" Yes. What are the behaviors we have to live? When we do those, will you buy more from us? Suddenly, the executors are going, "Culture is not some philosophical abstract in a Shakespeare play. Culture is concrete. It's real." You see it in Walmart. Again, I hate to start with examples because there's always going to be a counter, but Walmart says we want to be known for low prices. Guess what? That's our culture. Why do I go to Walmart? When I had spend a week in an executive program, and they don't have a laundry machine, I don't want to send my laundry out. I go to the Walmart and buy a new shirt. It's cheaper than the hotel laundry, and it's a great low price. You know what? It works, and that's not Nordstrom's identity. Nordstrom has an identity. I worked with the Nordstrom brothers, and their identity is so clear. It's service. Guess what? I'll pay a premium. I don't know if you like to shop. We agree on so much else. I'm not a fan of long-term shopping. I love Nordstrom. Last time I went to Nordstrom, it was 220, and then what's 220? Two minutes and 20 seconds. I got a pair of shoes.

David Gardner: Nice.

Dave Ulrich: That is so cool, and am I willing to pay a 20% premium? I walk in, I point at my shoes, and I say, "Replace those." They bring them out. I put them on I'm out in two minutes and 20 seconds, and I just paid a 20% premium. I'm going, "That's great for me," because I don't want to spend the time in this store. Build that identity outside in, and when you can get that external brand, I'm an entrepreneur. What do I want to be known for by my targeted customers going forward, that same logic becomes my internal culture. Then you act against it, you hire, you train, you pay. You do all of the HR systems to make that happen.

David Gardner: One of my favorite thinkers, and there's so much overlap between you both coming from different places. He's from a branding and marketing firm, but Roy Spence, who wrote a wonderful book called It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For.

Dave Ulrich: I love it.

David Gardner: His firm has helped build the Walmart brand, and bags fly free for Southwest Airlines, etc. It's the people in business who understand culture and brand that I find most interesting and most influential for me personally. I want to ask you, Dave, just a broad sweeping question, so over the last, let's say 10, 20 years, and you're part of this, there's been more respect paid to purpose. There is more like the word "culture" has more respect in the marketplace, I think, these days. I'm curious whether you think we're there enough. Have we gone too far in some cases? Has the purpose movement gone too far in places? What is your overall assessment? I don't spend much time with Fortune 200 CEOs, so I don't really know how many seriously value culture these days. You're more in touch with them than I am. How would you assess the overall respect, the authentic belief in the power of culture across corporate America today?

Dave Ulrich: Not enough. I'll keep it really simple. I think there's rhetoric. I don't know any senior executive would say, "I want to build a bad place to work." There may be some that behave that way and their behavior communicates it, but almost any executive would say, "I want to build an affirming positive place." Then the question is, how do you do that? How do you build that abundant organization? In the Y of the workbook, and you ask what's evolved. Wendy and I did a pretty good summary of the history of the work. You got engagement, commitment, satisfaction. All these studies that have a great history, we came up with eight dimensions. Today, I'd have four. That's my spirit of taxonomy. When in doubt, keep it even more simple. If I'm working with a senior business team, and this is not an HR team, this is a business team. What do I promise my employees? Be safe. Physical, psychological safety. This came out of COVID. You've got to have a good physical environment.

Amy Edmondson, whose work I just adore on psychological safety. Her new work is intelligent enterprise, just incredibly you’ve got to be safe psychologically, believe me. That's purpose. Is there an overarching purpose? Does the purpose of this company match my beliefs? Is there something that grabs your heart, not just your head? We can come to work with our hands and feet all the time. But until you come to work with your heart and soul, it's not there. Is there something that gives me a sense of belief that moves me forward? Become better. Am I learning, growth, mindset, whatever you want to call it? Am I becoming better because of the work that I do? Am I improving in my personal mission in life? Be safe, believe, become, and then belong. I find this so compelling. Again, I love simplicity because it helps me remember stuff. Again, this is from my wife who's a very good psychologist. We're depressed about our past. We've got history, and by the way, you can't relive the past but get over it. We're anxious today about our future. What's going to happen in the uncertain world, and we're lonely in the present? Of those three, depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Loneliness is the big one. The need to belong, to say, where do I fit? Where do I come in? In our work today, the why of work is it was the right book for its time. It felt and thank you. It's still that abundance as a metaphor. Be safe, physically, psychologically, believe. Make sure that organization's purpose matches mine. Walmart's trying to build belief. They're trying to change the world, and we've used them as an example, and they're amazing as a case study. It sounds like your colleagues have helped with that brand.

We've worked with Donna Morris, their head of HR. It's fascinating. Her job before Walmart was the senior vice president at Adobe of customer and employee experience. Her entire job was bridging those two, now she's doing that at Walmart. Be safe, believe, become. Am I resilient? Am I learning? Am I running into failure? I love your rule-breaker word. You don't break rules by doing what's been done. You break rules by doing something that's not been done, and it's OK to do that. Be safe, believe, become through resilience; and then belong. Create a sense of community. Create a sense where it's OK if I fail, because I'm going to learn from that. I'm going to have repair. I'm going to find out how do I improve? Those are the four things that if we were doing the Y of work today, we'd have, and even in the AI world, those things become even more important. I can't believe we've gone 28 minutes without saying AI five times. We both should confess. But it's not AI. Let me just get started on that if you want to go deeper. Talent today is not just people, and it's not just AI, it's the combination. Again, I love simplicity.

I say, the new formula for talent is AI, artificial intelligence. It gives efficiency, it builds capacity, it gives information times human ingenuity. By the way, the times means you got to have both. Because if you have one to 10 on both and you get nine on AI and two on ingenuity, you get 18 out of 100. The multiplier means you got to do both as an entrepreneur. If you do human ingenuity, which is the creativity, and I'll define that in a minute more clearly. But you don't do AI. You're really good at creativity, but you're inefficient. You're not going to succeed. We believe that talent today is not AI or people. It's both, and so AI gets so much attention around artificial intelligence, agentic AI, automation, all of the things and you know the authors on this, and they're geniuses. I don't know how they're doing this stuff it just mystifies me. Times HI. What HI means for me is human ingenuity, four things, the human touch, and I'm going to bet almost all of your authors do these four things. They have a vision of the future. They don't just summarize the past that AI does. I love AI to say, give me a summary of boom. AI summary of the past. Human ingenuity, a vision of the future.

Two, innovation in the present. AI can tell me what's been done. What's been the latest experiment on high-performing teams in this setting? I was with one company, and they said, "We want to develop managers in our 40 manufacturing plants around the world. We've gone to AI. They've told us what the skills are, and we're going to go now build a management system, hire, train, develop against those skills." I said, "Time out." How many of your competitors have done the same thing? All of them. AI can summarize that. You've got to innovate. You don't want to do the same ten skills that everyone else's then. Vision of the future. Innovation. Emotion in the present. AI is fake emotion. By the way, it is really scary. This is one that scares me so much that we're seeing people use AI as their counselor, use AI as their emotional support. It is scary because it's programmed to make you feel good about yourself. We've seen some lawsuits with teenagers getting into trouble with that and adults getting into trouble. Let me do them again, vision of the future, innovation of the present, emotion with relationships, or empathy.

Wisdom in judgment is for W, wisdom, ethics, wisdom in decision-making. I call that view V-I-E-W. It's my way to remember. AI is capacity, efficiency. Human ingenuity is view. Vision, innovation, emotion or empathy, and wisdom. That's the differentiator. That's the one that's going to allow me to succeed in the marketplace. Frankly, if you're not investing in AI today, you're in trouble, and to be honest, nobody's going to look at you too long. I bet investors today are saying, "We can see the investments in AI." People know how to ask questions, they know how to do agentic AI they're getting it. If you're not at par pretty soon, you should be at par. That's not a differentiator. Human ingenuity is a differentiator. Is there a vision of the future? Is there innovation? Is there emotion and empathy which gets you into that be safe, believe, become, belong? Is there wisdom? I'm going to ask you a question. How do you know that an executive has wisdom in his or her judgment? How do you sense that?

David Gardner: For me, giving a glib answer to something that I would really want to spend more time thinking about, Dave, I would say that when somebody speaks from their own experience, and I feel an authentic connection with them as they explain how they think about things, and sometimes we value that they're vulnerable or honest, but that can be taken too far. Sometimes I also value people who are excellent and explain how to do something well. But when I feel a true human connection with that person, and they have something that I don't have. They have a perspective that I'm going to learn from; that for me is wisdom.

Dave Ulrich: Amen. Two things strike me as I listen, David, try to learn with you. One is, AI gives me a polished report, and it's frightening. Their words are so perfect. Their visuals are good. You can go to whichever AI tool you've got. I want to find out what's behind it. Tell me how you think about that. By the way, both of us have English degrees. The beauty of an English degree, you actually have to read the book. You can’t in our day; you couldn’t read the Cliff Notes and get away with it. But I want to know how you think about it. How do you see it? To me, that's the wisdom, so tell me what's not in the polished report. Why did you come up with that term? Where does that come from? What's your experience? The second one, and this is one of the I love simple tests. People have said, you've written some books on leadership you've got, and I love data. My PhD is in taxonomy. It's in data. Here's my test. I'll tell you, somebody who's passing it right now. When I leave an interaction with a leader or another person, do I feel better or worse about myself? Completely intuitive. We've not met. We've just had a 30, 40-minute interaction. I'm feeling better about myself.

David Gardner: I'm feeling better about myself, Dave, thank you.

Dave Ulrich: That's a signal that there's authenticity. By the way, you can be with other people who are really smart. Let me tell you the data. Let me tell you this. Let me tell you that, and I leave, going, I'm stupid. Time out. There's something. By the way, it may be true, too. In fact, the first response is, how did they figure that out so fast? But good leaders, and if you're an entrepreneur, bring people in and say, "How do I help you feel better?" Let me give an example of how to do that. It's not easy. It's easy if it's all good news. I'm going to give you a bonus. We're all going to get rich. We're all going to live in big houses in Portland, Oregon, take cruises on the Columbia, and have a great life. What if it's bad news? The reality is there's bad news.

I'll tell you a quick anecdote. I'm coaching a very senior executive in a big global firm. I won't say more than that. An employee and this firm uses email to communicate, which is not a good idea to start with, but it is what it is. I said, "Before you send out comments, and we had a pretty good trust. We'd work together for about a year. Call me or text me. Send me an email." He sent me an email, he said, "I'm about to send." Here's the message. You made a huge, egregious mistake that's going to cost our company millions of dollars. If you can't fix it, you'll be fired. I jumped out of my chair, and I said, "Don't hit send." [LAUGHTER]. He said, "What do I do?" I said, "It's real simple." Three lines. No. 1, I care about you. That's it. However you want to say it. No. 2, you have great potential at this company, and you made a huge mistake, and it's going to cost us millions of dollars. Do not walk away from the reality. Line 3. What can we learn together to go forward? He said, "Let me write that down." I said, "Use your words, but think about those three words. I care, you have great potential, and you made a mistake." That's legitimate. It's not you as a person. You made a mistake. What can we learn? He sent it, and he called back the next day, and he said, "Two days later, actually." he said, "I got an amazing response." We're not going to lose the executive, and the executive said, "Thank you." The executive and I had a conversation that is going to fix a few things that caused us to lose the money. He said, "Dave, that's so simple."

By the way, it's scary. This is the message of The Why of Work. How do you leave feeling better about yourself and belong and feel better? Again, I love that because it isn't just being flirtatious or flattering or good all the time, but I care. You made a mistake. Here it is. What are we going to learn? I think that line, David, can really help leaders move forward and make a big difference.

David Gardner: Your stories come from your lived experience, Dave. You and Wendy have learned so much about coming from different places, whether it's organizational behavior or human psychology. There's such powerful lessons that are timeless and shared through your work, and I wanted to ask you, this is a Rule Breakery question or thought. A friend of mine, Raj Sisodia, who's written some great books about conscious capitalism, which is an organization that I love and that I've worked with on the board for some years, Raj has this line, and I love this line, and I'm curious how you take this one, Dave. He says, "I'm not a big fan of the phrase human resources. Humans are sources, not resources." Dave Ulrich, do you still like the term human resources?

Dave Ulrich: Pick your term. I don't care what you call it. Let me tell you why I can still live with it. We have a legacy of terms. We have industrial relations, employee relations, personnel. When I think of human resources, I'm redefining both words. One is human. Who are the humans our firm has to interact with? Everybody says, The employee. I go, no question, but here's another insight. It's one that's so obvious. If we don't succeed in the marketplace, there is no workplace. A customer is a human being.

David Gardner: You betcha.

Dave Ulrich: An investor is clearly a human being. That's who you write for. A citizen in the community is a human being. For me, the human, and human resources are all of those stakeholders. If you define human simply as an employee working somewhere in the factory, you've missed the goal of human resources. A resource is simply something that helps you get the work done. There's a lot of resources: the air we breathe, the water we drink. The human resource is one of the only growing resources. It can expand. It grows. You mentioned Wendy. I'll just share some research that was profound for me. Her research was built on some of the work by Martin Seligman, that's, I think, genius: positive psychology.

David Gardner: University of Pennsylvania is a big fan.

Dave Ulrich: It's brilliant work. His latest work on hope is even better. On her committee was Chris Peterson, who came up with Martin with the six domains of positive strengths, PERMA was with Chris Peterson. What Wendy did is she studied teenagers, adolescents. As they went through adolescence, the demands on them went up. This is not hard to see. You're aging. You've got physical demands, social demands, emotional demands, chemistry demands, relationship demands. The demands on a teenager go up. We can all see that. It's not hard to see. Those teenagers were depressed when the demands exceeded a resource. Think of a two-by-two grid. You've got a high demand, you got no resource to cope. You're depressed, and the depression leads to terrible consequences. You know what? That happens at work.

The demands in our world today are huge. We face global technology change with AI. We face economic change; we face uncertainty. We face so many demands, political will. We just face so demands. But if you don't balance that with resources, you're going to get burned out. You're going to have mental health problems. You're going to struggle, you're going to get in some trouble. But what she found is when the demands are high for a teenager, and you gave them a resource. The resource could be parent help, it could be family, it could be tutoring, it could be exercise, whatever the resource is, you stayed in balance. That is such a useful equation for me. I love it. As Wendy and I face demands, we had three kids. We have 10 grandkids. I don't know about your family life, but when we had three kids, she's doing PhD. I'm doing my work. The demands are terrible. We said, ''Time out, we got to go get a resource.'' We're going to hire someone to clean our house. We're going to eat out a bit. We're going to do DoorDash. There needs to be a balance, and we choose not to outsource our kids.

What are the resources a business leader can access to stay in balance? We found five: physical, nutrition, diet, sleep. Take care of your body. It's the only one we've got. Emotional. Laugh. Have fun. Just find a way to take care of yourself emotionally. Laugh when things go bad. Just find an emotional sense. For me in the ‘90s, and I'm dating myself, it was two Seinfeld episodes. I shouldn't admit that. People say, ''Dave, how do you take care of yourself?'' I watched Seinfeld for two episodes. It gives me an emotional resource. Physically, emotional, social gallop and everybody, you have a best friend at work. I'd say have a best friend who could care less about your work. I hope you have some friends in D.C. who are not just family. They're obligated friends, but let's just go hang out. Let's just go shop. Let's go do something, whatever it is, physical, emotional, social, intellectual. That's the learning. Am I learning, am I growing?

Then the final one for me, and it's a tricky word to use, but I'm not ashamed of it. It's conscious capitalism. Spiritual. Are you finding meaning and purpose? That's not a religion. In fact, the positive psychology work by Martin Seligman, he's an agnostic. He says, PERMA, the things that give you meaning, are drawn from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hindu, Buddhism. I think that spiritual meaning thing is critical. Why am I OK with the word resource? The demands are going to go up. By the way, we can get rid of some of those, but you can't get rid of all of them today. It's a demanding world. What's my resource? Physically, am I taking care of myself, emotionally? Am I simply having well, you define yourself as an optimist. Am I seeing what's right? That's the hope stuff by Martin Seligman today. Do I see what's? Socially, have I got a network I can turn to? When things are tough, do I have somebody for that 2:00 A.M. phone call?

David Gardner: So valuable.

Dave Ulrich: By the way, I've said to people I coach, you are now on my 2:00 A.M. List. If you wake up at night and you're troubled. By the way, I get emotional cause some of them have called. It's 2:00 A.M. The phone rings. Dave, I'm struggling. Let's talk. By the way, isn't it sweet? I've got some of those friends. I pray that you've got some of those friends. I don't need to know who they are. They know who they are. Intellectual? Am I learning? Am I failing? That's the growth mindset. The Carol Dweck work is so good. I'm not failing. I'm learning. You bet. Then spiritual, am I willing to acknowledge and conscious capitalism? Mike Beer is a part of that. They're so good. There is meaning there. I happen to be active in a church, and I'm not ashamed of that. I'm not imposing church, but I will impose the need to find meaning in your life. I won't impose. That's a terrible way to say it. I will leave it in because I want people to hear that I'm willing to self-correct. I want to encourage people to find personal meaning wherever that comes from.

David Gardner: Beautifully said, and I completely agree. I also love how you're drawing on the greats in their field, Seligman, Carol Dweck. There are others. You're familiar with them all, Dave, and that's something else I want to appreciate about you. At different points, I've almost felt like, Do I even need to be here? Because I'm just enjoying Dave talking on this podcast. I'm reminded that you've been a professor. You're a professor Emeritus at University of Michigan Ross Business School. But I really appreciate how you can lay out your frameworks and provide examples. This is just a beautiful, a relistenable episode of this podcast for me. Thank you for that. There are so many different topics I'd like to broach at this point, Dave, because when we think about the why of work, we're really thinking about almost every aspect of our own personal lives and of the organizations that make up our world and make our world happen in a lot of ways. I'm not sure there could be more relevant topics or more numerous topics that we could broach, but I feel compelled to ask, maybe this one, five years after a great forced experiment in remote work, also known as COVID-19. What would you say, Dave Ulrich, CEOs have gotten wrong about bringing people back? What have employees gotten wrong about wanting to stay home?

Dave Ulrich: I love this question because we all went through COVID, and it was a dramatic shock for all of our systems. I hope we had fun with it. Back then, if you remember, toilet paper was at risk. We got little paper bags, and we put a roll of toilet paper, a bottle of water, and a Power Bar, and took it to our neighbors and said, We know you're staying at home, but we want to give you this without talking to you. It was so fun. A couple of weeks later, one of the neighbors, or a couple of days later, a neighbor brought back the empty toilet paper roll and said, Thank you. That's the idea of fun. I mean, it's just a tough world. I think executives, I think employees, and I think many of us have the wrong question. The question is, where should I work? Here's what I think I discovered we discovered during COVID. Where you work doesn't matter very much. Why you work and the value you create for others, matters a great deal.

The boundary of work for decades was a physical boundary. I get up, and my father worked for the government. I get up in the morning, I drive to work, I put in time, I drive home. Today, where you work doesn't matter. Why you work. The question I hope a CEO is asking is: think about the tasks that an employee is engaged in. How is that task creating value for a customer outside the company, the human that we just talked about? I don't care where you work. You're probably working at home. I work at home a lot. One of my great lessons learned: the first book I wrote in 1990, we dedicated to the Toshiba laptop computer, without whom we wouldn't have written the book, because the book was written on airplanes. You know what? Boundary of work is not a place. So my advice to an entrepreneur: be very clear about how is a customer or an investor, obviously, getting value from what this employee does. If they get value being together, which is critical because there are times you've got to come together. You've got to see that collusion, that collaboration that makes 1+1 = 3.

There are other times you don't need to come together. You've written books. I write papers. You do a podcast. You don't have to be in a room with other people to do a podcast. I don't be with other people to write. I do that in my own time. Where we've got it wrong is we're asking the wrong question. We're saying, Where should you work? I think we should say, why are you working? To create value for a customer. What work are you doing that creates it? How can you do that work? Often through technology so that a customer creates value. If I’m a senior executive, I may want to go to an employee and say, describe how what you did in the last 24, 48 hours created value for a customer, and can you be specific? Bam. I could come to the office and not answer that cause I'm playing company politics. Or I could be at home and saying, Wow, I just worked on through AI, I just worked on an algorithm. I worked on a program, and here's the customer I tested it with, and I think we're going to sell this product. Bam.

David Gardner: Let me bring in the rest of the world, as well, Dave, because I admittedly was thinking a little bit too much about myself. In my den, my company, my organization, my stocks, my organizations. You've worked all over the world. I guess my question is, are the things that give work meaning basically universal in your mind, or does the why of work look different in some ways in Shanghai versus Mumbai versus Copenhagen versus Detroit?

Dave Ulrich: What's a foreign country you've been in recently?

David Gardner: Ireland.

Dave Ulrich: We were in Iceland, both ice and Santa Claus. And I'm going to go back to the things we've discovered. Do people in Ireland or Iceland want to be safe psychologically, emotionally? Yeah.

David Gardner: Sure.

Dave Ulrich: Sure. Do they want to believe? Do they want to have a purpose? Do they want to say, I know that there's something driving me? You can see where I'm going. Do they want to believe, be safe? Do they want to grow? Do they want to get better? Do they want to advance? Do they want to become, and do they want to belong? My sense is those fundamental principles are pretty universal. Now, guess what? It's going to vary. Iceland may not be the place you do that in the winter when you don't see the sun very often. Ireland may be a place where you do that as you go through different things. So I believe that the principles are pretty similar of what drives people. It's so interesting. I don't know which story to tell. I have to be careful with this one. Because I'm on LinkedIn a lot, I'm on Internet a lot. I get quite a few comments from Iraq and Iran. I'm probably not going to go there right now. Politically.

By the way, that's an IQ test. But you know what? The questions I get are the same basic questions. How do we take care of our family? How do we be safe? Not always easy? How do we belong? How do we become? How do we believe? I think those principles apply almost everywhere. The practices may vary. What I did 15 years ago, I didn't there was no such thing as a podcast. Well, how far back do I go with you? You're the early entrepreneur, 605 sessions, in 2010, there weren't as many podcasts, but the world's changed. But I think those fundamentals are very much the same and universal.

We actually studied that. We studied big companies. A large global company in Japan, where I did some of my early research, pick a Huawei, pick Alibaba, pick Hire has more in common with a large global company in the US, pick Facebook or some of the large technology companies, Amazon, than it does with small companies in China. Large global companies compete with other large global companies. There are variabilities by geography, but you compete in that large global market. That's the Olympics. I'm almost done with this diatribe. This is the Jamaican bobsled. Guess what? There's an Olympic standard for the bobsled or for the ski jump. This is Eddie The Eagle.

David Gardner: I remember him.

Dave Ulrich: He was the No. 1 ski jumper in England. He went to the Olympics. I don't think he'd get there today, because today, you've got to have a minimum threshold. But there is a global standard around taking care of people and being performance-oriented. The big global companies do compete with each other across those borders. Those principles are much the same on which you compete.

David Gardner: I'm not surprised to hear you answer that. Indeed, I do think that so much of what drives humans is true from one human to the next. We're obviously from different cultures, different histories, different expectations, different resources. Everything is unique, and context is one of my favorite words. Dave Ulrich, one thing I notice as a stock picker is that since I'm always hunting innovation, And my mandate in my 30-plus years at The Motley Fool has been to help people invest better. So I ask, what wins? You've helped me see that. One of the things that Dave Ulrich knows wins is when companies truly serve their customers, when they are streamlined if necessary, when they are focused, when they are heartful and when they are abundant in service of their customers; we almost always win with those kinds of companies and those kinds of stocks.

Here's my question. I find a lot of them in the United States of America. It's much harder for me globally to locate leading innovators that have winning prospects and winning cultures in many other countries and areas of the world. Even something as simple and in some ways connected to us as Europe, it's hard for me to find European brands, other than maybe some cars and some foods that really innovate at scale worldwide. Maybe Asia does this better. I'm just curious, Dave: is there anything to this? You and I are celebrating the humanity that runs through all of us, and I'm finding not so many rule breakers outside the United States of America.

Dave Ulrich: I love the concept of innovation. You've done it through Innovation for investment. I love Clayton Christensen's work, and I miss Clayton. He was a true innovator. He did The Innovator's Dilemma, which we see. Some of the other work he did really helped me. He said, There's two dimensions to organization and innovation. Discover and deliver. Deliver is the discipline to make it happen. You pick Japan. Japan: Six Sigma, Deming, Total Quality, really good at deliver, maybe not quite as good at Discover. What Clayton discovered and delivered, he did both. He said, The discovery process is the innovation. Well, both are part of innovation, but it's trying new things. It's rule-breaking. It's going to find that iconic lighthouse customer who wants something you've never tried before, and you're gonna fail. And you know what? Failure is an opportunity to learn.

I think sometimes in the U.S., we have a mindset in our education system, and I come through that system that says, Try stuff, especially for those of us who are English majors. I mean, what's going to be a good English paper? I don't want to write what somebody else has written about Shakespeare. I want to go be a Motley Fool. I want to go innovate. I want to try my first one of the papers before I got in trouble studying English was Beowulf, the Ideal Organization Man. I turned it into my English professor, who said, That's a weird paper. I turned it into my organizational behavior professor, who said, That's really cool. Nobody's ever talked about that. By the way, that's the rule-breaking that I think sometimes in America, the discovery is where the differentiation occurs. The delivery is where the parody is more likely to occur.

David Gardner: You very much for that. I hasten to add right away that there are rule breakers in every country in the world.

Dave Ulrich: No question.

David Gardner: They're listening to us right now. As my book, Rule Breaker Investing, just got published in a German-language edition, I was noticing some reactions from German fellow fools, German Rule Breakers saying, I hope this book will persuade my country to take more risks and innovate more because it's hard, this German friend of mine said, to find real German Rule Breakers. So that's part of what I'm reflecting there.

Dave Ulrich: You and I are so overlapped. I'm really worried about; I'm having the exact same conversation with the senior HR thought leaders in Germany. They're saying, Dave, you really are changing the way we think about humans. It's not just the employees. Anyway, you're changing that. We've got to get you over here. Because we deliver well, if I take that Discover Deliver again.

David Gardner: You bet.

Dave Ulrich: We deliver. We've got that discipline. But we're not discovering the way we should. We got to get that inflection point to try some new stuff. So I'm seeing that in the organization human resource area.

David Gardner: Fascinating. I'm happy to say Dave has graciously consented to playing our game, By Seller Hold, which is coming up. Soon. But, Dave, I think I would be remiss if I didn't open up the Pandora's box of artificial intelligence conversation. Now, you pointed out earlier the first half hour of our conversation. We barely said AI at all. That's not going to be true the next five minutes. Last week, I asked an AI expert, Vasant Dhar, who is a pioneer of AI from New York University, working in it basically as long as you and I have been working. The question I kept thinking about is, if AI succeeds spectacularly at what it does, which includes, as you pointed out, things knowing histories that you and I may not know, being able to respond with answers within seconds for complicated questions, being able to summarize whether it's past, present or future possibilities, being able to increasingly autonomously think on its own dot, the list goes on, AI succeeds spectacularly, which, by the way, is an assumption. It may be wrong. What are humans for? Here's the workplace version. If AI eventually does much of what you and I currently call work here in the year 2026, where does the why of work go?

Dave Ulrich: I'm going to give you three or four quick bullets. AI is a means, not an end. Long time ago in business schools, we wanted a course in business ethics. Option 1, let's teach a course called Business Ethics. Go through philosophy of science. Option 2, put ethics as part of every course, marketing, finance strategy. Everybody went to Option 2. That's AI. Somebody says, I'm going to an AI conference. Your friends should go. They're geeks. They would love that conference. But I think AI is a means to enable what we do. It enables talent. It enables organization. It enables marketing. It enables script writing, and it enables everything. Don't make AI the goal. Make the goal, the end, the area of expertise that you've got. No. 2, AI gives polished reports. It doesn't replace critical thinking. Critical thinking is what's behind the report? I actually get worried that AI polished reports can be dangerous. One, there's some hallucination. I looked up a few months ago my resume. I encourage people to do it. I had a PhD from Harvard. That was so cool.

David Gardner: It's not true. You don't remember that one.

Dave Ulrich: I don't even remember that one. But it's not polished reports that are going to make an impact. We can get those. It's the critical thinking. The thing we talked about before, which is wisdom. Number 3, I'll have four. Number three, I used the formula, AI times HI. Human ingenuity for me is vision, innovation, empathy and wisdom. You can't let that go. That's a differentiator. And finally, watch out the risk of AI, which is cognitive decline. Cognitive surrender. Whatever you want to call that today, the research I'm seeing at school is our daughter just finished law school at Anchorage. Anyway, she taught sociology for 15 years, went to law school. One of her peer students turned every paper in that was AI-generated. She passed law school. I wouldn't want to hire her as my attorney. By the way, she was in the bottom quintile of the class. AI is not a differentiator. There's a huge risk. I think that student had a cognitive surrender, had a cognitive decline. Our daughter said, Dad, I worked at all these papers. I wrote them. I used AI to help me do some literature review to get grammar right. But I want to learn how to think. I think there's a risk of AI taking away our cognitive ability. Thank you. Four bullets, real quick.

David Gardner: Really well done. I want to add not necessarily a fifth bullet to your list. I just want to go one step further, Dave. That is the power of asking questions. It's so interesting to me that what really drives AI and what drives that human ingenuity, that AI you're speaking to, is the intellectual curiosity or desire for better circumstances that ignites beautiful questions in some of our great thinkers and founders and entrepreneurs. People who ask a beautiful question like couldn't we do it differently? How might we do this better? The list goes on. We've become question askers in some ways, and I think humans could always have done this, but I think this is the real superhero power that I think we want our kids learning at every level of schooling. I know because you quoted this in your book, Peter Drucker once told you the leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future will know how to ask. In a world in which AI gives us infinite answers, the real differentiator might be the right question.

Dave Ulrich: The way, Peter Drucker is a great quote. I always loved to say culture strategy for breakfast. Peter Drucker he never said it. That's OK. But it's a great quote.

David Gardner: I do know that. I love those. I have a whole list of They never said that. For example, really quickly, Gandhi never said, B the change you want to see in the world. It's a beautiful It's on bumper Stickers. It's in TED Talks. I mean, it's a beautiful thought. Never said it.

Dave Ulrich: There's only one person who you can use to two or three people can trump Peter Drucker. Whether you're Christian or not, Jesus Christ was an incredibly influenced teacher. He asked 307 questions, and he had two answers. Nice ratio. By the way, I saw that in a theology talk recently. That's cool. You may not agree with some of his theology, but you can't deny he's impacted the world. He asked 307 questions, and he had two answers. I think there's a message in there.

David Gardner: Asking good questions becomes a more valuable and actually a truly human skill in the age of AI.

Dave Ulrich: I love it.

David Gardner: Let's close it out with buy, sell, or hold, Dave Ulrich. As you know, these are not stocks. But I'm asking you if these were stocks, would you be buying, selling or holding, and maybe a sentence or two as to why? You ready? Yes. All right. buy, sell, or hold, a company with no job titles.

Dave Ulrich: Sell because titles give you a sense of direction without getting locked in. If the title locks you into what you do, it's a sell. But if the title says. This is a general direction of my accountability, I'd probably I want to know the expectation that I have for what I should do.

David Gardner: Thank you. Let's stick with some more workplace BysellerHld. Another quick one, buy, sell, or hold, Dave Ulrich, the four-day work week.

Dave Ulrich: Hold because it's the same as where you work. I don't care how many days a week you work. Are you creating value for somebody else? If you are, that works. By the way, these could all be hold because they're all contingent. But if it works well, then you should work four days a week. If it works bad, don't work four days a week.

David Gardner: We spent decades celebrating expertise. Now AI can put an astonishing amount of expertise in anybody's hands. Buy, sell, or hold the generalist.

Dave Ulrich: Again, it's really tricky. I like specialists who can give me not only the deep expertise that AI gives, but more than anything, I want the generalists who can bring the human ingenuity into the workplace. Who can say, We can go discover some of what's been done. What needs to be done in the future, that vision, innovation, empathy, questioning, wisdom. I think the generalist is probably more likely to create some of that.

David Gardner: Great answer. What I love about that is there's a both and and that's clearly operating in your mind. Some of these are creating false trade-offs, and really, we want to have specialists, and we want to have generalists. But it's good to hear that we do want to have generalists because sometimes I think the generalists, the humanities people, feel like not as many people are now majoring in English literature anymore. So score one for the humanities. A phrase that I recently came across workplace culture phrase. Maybe you've heard this one new to me, the personality hire. This is the colleague whose value may be less about individual output and more about what happens to everybody else when they're in the room. Dave, buy seller hold the personality hire.

Dave Ulrich: You just triggered in me a message I want to get. Good. We've done research. What does it take for a leader to be effective? An entrepreneur running a company or somebody you hire? One is learning agility. Do they keep learning? We've talked about that. The other is to navigate paradox. How do you do both? Guess what? I want to hire people who can do the job. That's personality skill hire. That's the specialist. I also want to hire people who can help other people do their job better. I'm going to say I want both. I think we're tempted often to hire the person based on their specific skill. Mm hmm. Where have you done this? What have you done? Measuring somebody who makes the whole better than the parts is often the one that's going to be successful. The answer is both, but there's a lot of cases where we have a lot of specialists, but they're not playing as a team. If I can bring that person in who can be the elixir that makes that team work better as a team than just individual parts, that person is going to be very valuable.

David Gardner: Therefore, having the pattern recognition of recognizing what is needed in a given context is a superhero power. I'm having too much fun, so I'm adding more to the list here, Dave, thanks for playing along. Let's keep going. Employees knowing everyone's salary at an organization, buy seller hold.

Dave Ulrich: I have to laugh. I went to the University of Michigan 40 years ago, public university. I walked into an MBA class and they were laughing. I said, Why are you laughing? They said, you make $28,500 a year. It was public. I didn't know that. We're going to make more than that when we graduate. I thought about it for about 10 seconds, and I said, You know, I can change that. It took them about 10 seconds to realize what I meant. Some of you may not graduate. I think sometimes we get obsessed on both sides of that. My implication is money is a signal. It communicates what matters. And the Dan used money at the business school to signal. My first few years, I got the average increase was 4%. I got 10. Everybody said, why did he get ten? Well, they found out I was doing certain things. Why did now, by the way, at Michigan, I get zero because I'm one of the senior guys and they want to incent the younger guys. But I think money is a signal. Going public at appropriate times sends a signal as to what we care about. The headline, money is communication. Money is a signal.

David Gardner: Love that line.

Dave Ulrich: I think sometimes we should use that we should use that wisely.

David Gardner: Here's one I suspect could go anywhere. We celebrate ambition in our culture. You've spent a career thinking about what actually makes people and organizations flourish, they buy sell or hold ambition.

Dave Ulrich: Yes, with a caveat. We found there's three or four things that are critical for that employee. Ambition is one, agility, ability, achievement. You got the As again. Ambition, I think, depends on the person and their time. Again, this comes from personal. When I went off to do my PhD or to be a new professor at Michigan, my wife started her PhD program in psychology. Guess what? I stayed home and watched kids for six years, two days a week. I didn't get tenure. You know what? That was the right decision. I put my ambition on hold while she did what she needed to do. Then when she finished, we renegotiated. I think ambition is not a single point in time. I think it's a lifetime of commitment to learning, ability, agility, achievement. I think we have to be open to people who say, I'm going to do a little bit of a time out.

Now, by the way, there's a price of the time out. The price of the time out is that I didn't get tenure. You can't stay home two days a week and do drives with kids and join the women's group going around to serve lunch, which was a great experience for two days a week. Nice. Well, it was hard at times because I put my ambition on hold. I'm blessed. But it was the right thing. I hope company. Again, I tend to get emotional because I feel so strongly about this. I hope companies will talk to their employees and personalize that deal. Say, let's find a way to make this work for you. You've got an elderly parent that's sick. You need to take a few months. Take it. You're not going to be up for the promotion. You're not on the short list. That's the price. It's your choice. I wish we could get companies that give employees that agency to make the choice and be conscious about it, and then not to be punished. I came back. I'm now a chair. I was a chaired professor at Michigan for 35 years, but without tenure, by the way. They had to make an exception because they didn't want to violate their rule. Remarkable. They're the only one in the history of the university to be a chaired professor without tenure. By the way, that is when you say we're a Rule Breaker, that's a Rule Breaker. It sure is. I'm so grateful for leaders who do that.

I'll just give one story that's very personal. I'm at Michigan. I'm having success. We got invited by the church we're part of to say, Would you go run a mission for the church for three years in Canada? We said, Yes. That's that ambition question. I was on contract. I was on five year contracts, not tenure. I do get emotional with this. The Dan came up to me. He saw me in the cafeteria, and he said, I heard you just got invited to go do this service for your church for three years. I'm so proud. We need to do more. I guarantee you that when you come back, you'll have a position. I don't know how I'm going to do it, because nobody's ever taken a three-year leave of absence, especially when you're not tenured. But I guarantee you go do this. It's the right thing to do. Case, I wish we had more leaders like that. I wish we had more leaders like that, who break the rules and say, By the way, we're not going to do this for everybody. But, Dave, you're going off to do good works. Come back. They've been so gracious and so kind. That's the rule breaking that is still achieving value. You're delivering. One of the other faculty said, I'd like the deal, and the Dan said, no, you're not going to get the deal.

David Gardner: It also engenders a lifelong loyalty that has us talking about it now. In front of thousands of people who are being influenced by that. It's just it's priceless an action like that when it's a beautiful story. Couple more, Dave. I Seller hold taking your kids into the family business.

Dave Ulrich: Bye. We love our kids. We want to give them resources. That's word not everybody likes. Our kids all happen to have PhDs, which is weird, but they're in sociology and psychology. We have a family business around some investments. You've invested in Motley Fool, in stocks, we've invested in real estate. All three of our kids have values, and I think we are teaching them the family business. Beautiful. I hope they'll replace us. I have a goal. I want my kids to outperform me, if that's what they choose.

David Gardner: Last one, Dave Ulrich, buy, sell, or hold. Pickleball taking over lots of former tennis courts?

Dave Ulrich: I do know pickleball. Great idea. Pickleball is more open to people, and it's good for old people. I need to do a buy, sell, or hold for you. Do it. Buy, hold, or sale, be an optimist to envision the future and say as a prophet, This is the vision of the future where you could go or a pessimist. This is how you have to repent to get progress. Which would you go with?

David Gardner: I would strongly favor the former, but I'm open to both. I think either can be done really well. But to me, one of the great takeaways of life for me at the age of 60 is that those who say, we can with Henry Ford, whether you think you can or whether you think you cannot, you're right, though I know there's a good Michigander for you. I strongly subscribe to that school of thinking. I would rather surround myself with we can people than it's all going down game over man. I don't think many of those form organizations of lasting value, but again, there are exceptions to the rules.

Dave Ulrich: What a delight. Thank you. I've learned. I've got a page of notes. Love it. Did I take? I'm consumed about that, and we'll think about it. Thank you so much. I can now see why Mont Lake Foles has been so successful. Congratulations.

David Gardner: That's so kind of you. Thank you. I have a couple pages of questions that I haven't gotten to answer, but we do need to bring our time to an end simply because all good things must come to an end. August itself with three talented authors is now coming to an end. Our mailbag address is rbi at fool.com. If you found yourself moved, challenged by anything Dave shared with us this week, I'd love to hear from you. Next week, Dave Ulrich, thank you. It has been a privilege to spend this time with someone who's spent decades, not just studying how people work, but asking how work can work better for people. The Y of work your book has stayed with me for years. It takes something most of us spend most of our lives doing, and it just asks us to expect more from it, more meaning, more contribution, more connection, maybe even more delight. I'm grateful and have been for the book, but now I'm grateful for a new friend, Dave Ulrich, thank you very much and Fool on.

David Gardner has positions in Amazon and Walmart. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Amazon, DoorDash, and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group and Southwest Airlines and recommends the following options: long January 2028 $330 calls on Adobe and short January 2028 $340 calls on Adobe. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.