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The Action Catalyst

CLIP: The Waldorf Astoria Elevator Problem

26 Mar 2026

Transcription

What are the jobs of the future according to Jason Wild?

0.115 - 28.654 Jason Wild

One of the questions I get, and I get a lot, especially having worked in Microsoft and IDM, is what are the jobs of the future? What advice can you give? And I really take that to heart because I've personally benefited from tech automation and being a part of these companies. And I feel a deep responsibility. And I do think that we're generally underestimating the amount of change that's coming.

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28.82 - 54.01 Jason Wild

In other words, as much hype as there is, there's even more change than I think warrants the hype, believe it or not. And I could be wrong. But the advice I give is this. The world will always have problems. We may not know what those problems are. So get great at problem solving. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's like, okay, well, how do I do that?

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54.612 - 66.825 Jason Wild

Well, I'm one of the disciplines that's been a bit battered and bruised is, you know, the world of design thinking, right? Design thinking, right? There's fatigue. I think it's kind of one of those been there and done that.

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66.805 - 93.707 Jason Wild

But if you strip away kind of the language and you get to the core of what design thinking is all about, it's being world-class, it's solving problems and the right problems that matter to humanity and business and the world. So the likes of IDEO and McKinsey and Stanford D School over the years have developed capabilities to teach all sorts of people design thinking.

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93.887 - 117.855 Jason Wild

And so to me, I think we may not see and have clarity of what those problems are, but the world will have problems. And look at Gen AI. Gen AI is a powerful, almost magical tool. But if you're not focusing it on the right problems... then you're wasting a lot of energy and resources working on things that honestly don't matter.

118.856 - 142.485 Jason Wild

So one of my favorite stories of this, living in the New York area is the Waldorf Pastoria Hotel. Powerful, but brief story. Every couple of decades, Waldorf goes through a massive renovation. But when they went through the last renovation, they open it up to the public first week and Very, very, very important. Entire leadership team is tracking all of the customer feedback and input.

143.828 - 168.62 Jason Wild

There's a problem. Uh-oh, what's the problem? A spike in complaints from customers about something. What is it? Well, they're saying the elevators are too slow. Let's organize an emergency meeting, get all of our bright minds. All these ideas are thrown on the table, right? Million dollars for this, multi-million dollars to change the algorithm, change the staff elevator.

169.361 - 184.401 Unknown

An intern who was there just to take notes raises her hand and says, hey, can I have a few thousand bucks for a couple of experiments? Like, yeah, whatever. A few thousand dollars, this is a big problem. Go do it. A week later, all of the complaints disappear.

185.123 - 210.381 Jason Wild

What happened? Well, the intern did a couple of experiments. What did she do? Well, she put some mirrors around the elevators because the problem was that the elevator wasn't too slow. The problem was the weight was too boring. So get good at problem solving and humans will always be the best at picking what the right problems and outframes are.

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