Chief Change Officer
#265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
Part Three.If change were a sport, Colin Savage would have a trophy room. He’s worked in 70+ countries, lived in 7, and reinvented himself more times than most of us change our passwords.In this episode, Colin calls out lifelong learning as passé and introduces his take: skill stacking. Plus, we get into why having a personal AI strategy might be just as important as having a LinkedIn profile. Buckle up—Colin’s not slowing down, and neither should you.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Skill Stacking: Building the Professional Toolkit“Skill stacking, by contrast, is about curating abilities that complement one another professionally. It’s not about learning everything, but about combining practical skills—like emotional intelligence and technical expertise—to tackle complex challenges with a well-rounded approach.”AI as a Symphony, Not a Solo“The real power of AI lies in its harmony with other tools and disciplines. No single tool can address every need, but by leveraging the strengths of multiple technologies in concert, professionals can tackle challenges faster, smarter, and more effectively.”Cheating AI? The Consequences Are Real“From students to professionals, relying on AI without human effort leads to steep penalties. A student might fail, a professional might face fraud charges. The higher the stakes, the more critical it is to leverage—not outsource—human intelligence.”From Problem-Solving to Value Creation“AI isn’t just a tool for fixing problems—it’s a way to grow and extend what’s already working. By pairing the strengths of people and machines, businesses can unlock untapped potential and deliver results that weren’t possible before._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Colin Savage --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Colin Savage and what is his journey?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. This is a three-part series with Colin Selvidge.
In part one, the first episode, we'll dive into Colin's fascinating journey as a self-proclaimed change addict turned change guru. Colin's career spans continents, cultures, and industries seven countries lived in, seven more seconded to, and projects in over 70 nations.
From organizational transformation to personal reinvention, he has mastered the art of embracing change and applying those lessons to life. In this conversation, Colin unpacks his unique perspective on change. How throwing himself into the unknown led to unparalleled growth and insight.
From leaving Canada with nothing but a suitcase and ambition, to navigating industries from telecommunications to financial services, Colin shares how the constant evolution around him became his greatest teacher. In the next episodes, we'll explore the learning required for transformation, why Colin believes lifelong learning is outdated and skill stacking is the future.
And finally, in part three, we'll tackle AI, human intelligence, and why every one of us needs a personal AI strategy. Buckle up. This one is a ride.
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Chapter 2: Why is skill stacking more effective than lifelong learning?
Lifelong learning is an outdated concept in that it lacks focus for some people, whereas skill stacking is a little more concentrated and it will help you really build the keys. But again, it's not going to be specific in an area, but you can apply it across a swath of area and it'll really help you advance your career and advance whatever you want to do to be a standout kind of person.
I kind of agree or disagree with what you just said. Lifelong learning is about the attitude, in my opinion. Lifelong learning isn't just about acquiring new knowledge. It's about figuring out how you learn best. Some people thrive in classroom settings or in-person workshops, while others prefer self-paced digital formats.
The methods vary, but the goal is the same, which is to keep growing, to keep learning. When it comes to skill stacking, I see it as something deeper. You mentioned it's about purposefully merging diverse skills to solve complex challenges, and I think you're right. What's often missing isn't the means to learn, We have more access than ever to tools, training, and knowledge.
The gap lies in connecting the dots between those skills and leveraging them in meaningful ways to multiply the impact. In my view, we are living in a tool economy, tool, T-O-O-L. Everything is about the tool. whether it's check GPT today, Google yesterday, or whatever the next hot thing will be. The mindset is, if you have a problem, there's a tool for that. Need a solution?
Just grab a hammer, a screwdriver. What is the problem? Most of the time, those tools are just solving service-level symptoms. not addressing the deeper underlying issues. It's like putting a band-aid on a cut without treating the infection. Sure, the immediate problem looks solved, but the root cause persists, and people end up repeating the same mistakes.
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Chapter 3: What is the role of human skills in skill stacking?
I see this pattern a lot, especially among knowledge workers. They buy into the idea of lifelong learning, sign up for courses, pay for certifications, and stack up all these skills. But they don't actually go anywhere with them. Why? Because the key isn't just acquiring skills, it's in connecting them, applying them to real-life scenarios, case by case, and solving problems with them.
in an integrated manner. So the missing piece is less about technical skills and more about human skills, what most people call solved skills. Problem solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, communication, these are the connective tissue that make skill stacking impactful. Without them, you're just collecting tools in a toolbox. You don't know how to use effectively.
That's where I think the future of lifelong learning needs to focus. Not just teaching new skills, but on helping people build the connections between them and apply them in meaningful, impactful ways. It's not about the tools themselves. It's about what you build with them.
I agree. Yeah, you have brought the other hand that I'm not going to say that I forgot. But what I would add to what you're saying, and it's way before in the skill stacking, I differentiate between calling the person and calling the professional all the time. So skill stacking, those are skills stacked for my person. Calling the person, that's where lifelong learning for me did and always will.
And so I'm very clear on what's the differentiator. Because what you can do is if you're people like us or those listening that are like us, if you brought a whole crazy idea horizon of areas that you're interested in and you've read about, studied, done whatever to build up knowledge, it can be impossible to connect all the dots and make them all skip. I love reading modern African history.
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Chapter 4: How can personal interests differ from professional skill stacking?
I have three shelves of books in my house that are all about the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I am never going to use that, at least not now. Oh, I got to go get that PhD in writing. Or I need to go and this thing that I've been invested in for a long time and I enjoy reading about and it is a form of learning, doesn't need to be something that I'm going to incorporate into my work life.
And I purposely keep it separate. And that's the same thing of the musical instrument that happened to be gathered in bust, unfortunately, in the back of my room. Those are also skills that I'm learning throughout my life just for my own enjoyment. And I'm totally with you on the law of the instrument, right?
If everything, if you've got a hammer and you're good at it, then it'll look like a needle. I sit on a number of groups where we support startups and tech founders and entrepreneur. And the drive to just leap to the solution, because I think I can sell a widget to somebody rather than understanding to your point, like, is this actually a problem or is this set over something else?
It just drives me nuts. And so we're just going to end up with now the toolkit is going to have 7,000 tools, 6,800 of which I don't know how to use, and 50 that are actually useful for me to figure out any kind of a dilemma that I'm approaching. I think, yeah, I think you've done a good job of reminding me that Maybe the lifelong learning thing should be just for life.
And the guilt that should be where we focus on potentially getting the right kind of multi-skilled person who, to your point, doesn't just look down and build a tool, but is able to interact with others, is able to be empathetic, show emotional intelligence, all those kind of things.
And I think maybe sometimes get sharp to the side over the let's build the technical experience and skill ourselves up with. Now I know not just C++, but I also know all of these other JavaScript and other kind of software so I can build my own AI model. Let's go, right?
So you've been diving deep into AI lately. As someone with a strong background in change management and leadership, how do you see this technology shaping the future of change management and skills decking? What's your vision for where we're headed?
That's a fantastic and a fascinating comment. I'm starting now, because I'm not a very quiet person, often to my detriment, but I'm starting now to get people asking, Hey, I see you're doing this stuff in particularly generative AI. I'm very clear that I'm not a person. I don't build these things. I don't know the computer science behind it. I'm purely a practitioner of the tools.
I get people asking a lot, Hey, could you do a short little LinkedIn learning course for 30 minutes on, or do you have any of the top 10 degenerative AI tools or anything of this? I'm all for it. I think it's a good idea. But what I often find too is the people that are asking me or those that are very early on in their technical journey of learning.
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Chapter 5: How does AI integrate with change management and skill stacking?
So they're maybe late adopters, let's call them. They just want a silver bullet. They want, oh, what's the one tool I can use that can do everything? And I have to constantly pull back and I have to remind them all, AI is like anything else. It's going to be a combination of tools. It's going to be interdisciplinary.
So you're going to need not just an understanding of the AI tools and the skills that are required to use those tools, but you're going to need to know, you're going to need to understand strategy, how big the development skills were. You're going to need to know how human resources, the team leadership, all these kind of things.
You're going to need to know all of the soft skills that are always going to be fundamental and important. And then how does these, how does a MIT of your AI toolkit help you in individual instance? And for example, right now I'm working with a human resources consulting company.
We don't really know how AI could then, what you could do is if you use three, three or four different tool, you could help the company build its own GPT. feed it with its own policies. You could build a tool for HR professionals that said, here's where all our policies are. Here's where all of our templates are.
So instead of reading through 400 pages of documentation, you can use tools to then figure out, identify the policy that they may have to help or contravene, figure out some of the path forward, and then put together a plan that you as a professional are then bringing to review.
with your expertise and those interdisciplinary skills, and then present to senior leadership and say, this is what happened. This is what I think we should do. And this would be the underlying evidence for what I want. And you'll be able to do that in a day. rather than taking two weeks.
So there's, I think there's a way forward, but they am constantly surprised by how, how people with limited technology in particular experience and expertise, they, they just want a silver bullet. They just want what's the one tool that's gonna do everything. Nothing. There's no one tool that's going to do it all.
And in fact, if you think they're the case, then you need to go back and we actually need to think about what exactly are you trying to solve? It's a little bit of like maybe sort of expectation resetting. And then let's start at the beginning with what these tools are and explain to people how they work in concert and not. to build the best thing for you.
And all that's going to have to be tailored, which, as you said before, if we're always building tool for everything that's not yet a problem without understanding the symptom, then we're just adding more tools and making more distractions.
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