Just in case it’s not obvious, I really enjoy hearing about people’s jobs. I didn’t know why at first, but I’ve realized it’s because these sources give me more insights and encouragement. They’re also better at sparking my memory, and helping me make better connections between topics I’m covering.

I first got turned on to learning about careers in my 7th grade class at Brooklyn Friends School circa 1974, where our math teacher of all people had the bright idea of asking parents to come in and talk about their jobs. One dad talked about being an architect and all the details involved in designing large buildings and the materials and systems they required. Another talked about being a taxi driver and everything he had to know about safely transporting passengers and navigating the ins and outs of New York City in that long-ago, pre-GPS era.

That class lit me up permanently, I think, because the speakers and their jobs were like windows into the larger world. I started to realize there was a much wider radius of awareness than I knew about, mainly because I was a kid at the time.

Fast forward about 20 years, and I got to cover U.S. physicians wrestling with early managed care issues in a cover story for Hospitals & Heath Networks magazine. They reported on transitioning from traditional fee-for-service medicine that encouraged over utilization to HMOs that incentivized them to do less. The nation’s health care system is still struggling to find a middle way, and free itself of parasitic insurers, but the doctors at the time didn’t even have the language to describe how their practice and hospitals could reorganize themselves.

Luckily, some found they could use the “hang out a shingle” entrepreneurial skills they and earlier doctors used to start independent practices, and redeploy them to form or join physician hospital organizations (PHO) and affiliated medical groups like Kaiser Permanente, Geisinger, Cleveland Clinic and others. I remember several physicians reported that calling on their familiar, traditional, small-business values enabled them to understand how to participate in these new organizations and deal with managed care.

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Pile on another 30 years, and the system integrators I interviewed for this issue’s “How to build process engineers and operators” cover story had some equally great advice, in this case, for developing and training new personnel. More and better staffers are desperately needed to stop continuing brain drains in the process industries; offset bigoted federal policies persecuting immigrants, who could help fill millions of unfilled U.S. jobs; and cope with breakneck technical shifts like artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalization.

In response to all the recent fear, loathing and epic hoopla surrounding AI, Daniel Clark and Dylan DuFresne, of consultant and system integrator Abelara, reminded readers that AI is just a tool like a handheld calculator or a Swiss Army knife. Consequently, its capabilities must be directed by users trained employ it properly, along with their enduring mindsets, attitude, generosity, personality and critical thinking.

Sam Hoff, of system integrator Patti Engineering, added it’s crucial for users to master AI, so it doesn’t master them. For example, he reported that a job candidate during a recent video interview was apparently reading AI-generated responses. Not a good look. If you’re just repeating sounds like a parrot, or reading cue cards like Saturday Night Live’s humorless cast members in recent years, then what good are you?

Granted, I know I’m just a conduit for editorial content and other information. I’m aware that I’m dangerously close to being a total hypocrite when I warn others about being a parrot, when much of my career is doing something very close to exactly that. I can almost feel the humming and rumbling of divine justice over my shoulder.

However, similar to any good refinery, I try prove my value by turning all the raw material I gather into content that’s prioritized, concentrated, useful, easily consumable and hopefully entertaining. I try hard to sort through mountains of typically self-serving, overly-promotional baloney, and find the few useful wheatberries in all the chaff.  

Most of all, I rely on willing experts like Hoff, DuFresne, Clark and all the other sources I interview to clue me in about their experiences, provide some best practices from further along the learning curve, and give me and Control’s readers some much-needed advice and good news. Thanks, guys.