Why the road to greatness is paved with “emotional connection”

Jeremy Johnson co-founded and built the global talent network Andela on the idea that “brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.” Investors attracted to Andela’s mission to connect remote, largely African tech expertise with leading international companies have included the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation and Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures.

Johnson began his leadership journey by dropping out of Princeton to co-found the ed-tech company 2U, which he helped take public. He has been invited by the White House and Congress to speak on education and entrepreneurship, and his name has decorated a variety of young-leaders-to-watch lists. 

Big Think caught up with Johnson to talk about the future of remote work, GenAI, the importance of switching off your autopilot, and the best piece of leadership advice he’s ever been given.

Big Think: Like Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg you dropped out of college to start a business: was that an easy decision for you to make at the time — and how has it shaped your approach to leadership?

Johnson: Initially, my plan wasn’t to drop out, but instead to defer a year. I knew at the time that Princeton would still be there next year. In practice, I had an opportunity to build a company that investors had already offered to back, and I had a team of people who were excited about working on the project with me. Either it would work, or I would gain real-world experience. Ultimately, I felt that it would have been riskier not to take that year off.

That mindset contributed a lot to how I think about the world and leadership. People miscalculate risk all the time because the unknown feels riskier than it actually is. Being open to thinking through risk in a first-principles way shaped how I think about company-building.

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Big Think: How has your exposure to multiple cultures influenced your philosophy of leadership?

Johnson: Before college, I took a gap year and lived with a family for nine months in Chile through Rotary International, which provides a student exchange program. They were amazing people and opened my eyes to the reality that there are lots of ways that people can choose to live. And this was my first immersive exposure to an entirely different culture.

A formative part of the Rotary experience was this reminder that cultures are not better or worse. They’re just different. Different societies, different norms, and different approaches to the world. I loved it. I thought it was amazing and it influenced me to engage differently and see the world differently. This is another example of thinking in a first principles way — just because people do things one way doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it.

Big Think: What have the most astute leaders learned about remote work in the last five years?

Johnson: That the biggest challenge of remote is building and maintaining the emotional connection to the people and organization. Being in an office by default creates a single touchpoint for people, but you can achieve the same thing in a remote environment if you are purposeful about it. You need to plan and put effort into how people connect to both the mission and their colleagues. As long as you have intentional communication, you can have similar outcomes and opportunities, but if you don’t then it’s easier for people to drift.

Emotional connection to the mission really does inspire action and activity — ultimately a belief that you’re able to achieve it together is unifying. Being intentional about human connection and building culture together are the two biggest takeaways.

Big Think: Is the traditional “physical-presence office” essentially doomed by technology — and what does an evolved work culture look like?

Johnson: Offices aren’t completely doomed, but they are going to become a specific strategy for some companies. A small number of companies will leverage offices as a primary driver of attracting talent. In essence, it’ll be a niche perk for people that really care about those types of perks. Like when companies offered laundry service a decade ago. And that’s going to be a small subsection of companies. It will not be the norm.

Facilitating in-person engagement will still be important for relationship building and will be done in the form of offsites and company-wide gatherings. Humans feel emotionally connected when physically spending time in-person. I think those types of activities will actually become more important for facilitating relationship development.

Big Think: How has the new technology landscape, dominated by the arrival of GenAI, altered the demands of leadership?

Johnson: GenAI is going to impact productivity across the organization and has forced leaders to figure out where these productivity gains can occur and what roles they will need to achieve this. AI will help drive down the cost of custom software and this reduced cost will lead to an increase in the number of problems that people can solve using software. AI acceleration is going to have a huge impact on society and the way we all work.

Big Think: What’s the best piece of leadership advice you’ve ever been given?

Johnson: People rise and fall to the expectations that you set for them, and so if you believe in them, they’re more likely to believe in themselves. If you believe they can achieve greatness, they’re more likely to believe they can achieve greatness. A shared sense of belief that’s connected to purpose is a lot of what lets people surprise themselves. And I think it takes many people operating at a high level to collectively achieve things that matter.

Big Think: Is there any approach to leadership you find especially useful?

Johnson: Have a willingness to revisit your strategy in light of new evidence. This is really, really important for organizations. For most people, once they have a point of view on a topic, they just stop thinking about it and turn it into an autopilot type of mechanism. For example, most people are on autopilot when they think about talent and hiring. It’s always been done a certain way and that’s how they manage it. “Adaptive hiring” allows companies to increase their talent globally but also decreases costs and increases the value they can generate. This requires reimagining a relationship with talent and hiring that is different from what most people have historically done. I think a willingness to reimagine is oftentimes a hallmark of companies that ultimately win.

Big Think: How do you navigate tension points between protecting homegrown talent and being open to global talent?

Johnson: Oftentimes there is less tension than people expect. For many companies, certain hard-to-find skills are the limiting factor in growth. The fact that those skills are hard to find means they do not exist locally, and you should expand your search globally. Once that barrier to growth is removed, the company can hire for other roles because their business needs have increased. In short, companies should focus on “how to grow” vs location-based hiring. The best lever for growth is global talent.

Big Think: You have said about AI: “The hype is warranted but the fear is not.” For you, what is AI’s most exciting facet? And what should we be cautious about?

Johnson: The most exciting facet of AI is the potential for individuals to get more done, faster, in a higher quality way. Ultimately, it will enable people to have more impactful careers and contribute more to society. However, there will be a fine line between, on one hand, utilizing AI from a knowledge, productivity and efficiency perspective, and utilizing AI as a crutch on the other.

Take sales for example: Are you really going to learn about a company, or are you more likely to use AI to summarize and create a pitch that is tailored to that company? The reality is you are going to use AI. That means you will know less about your potential customer and you will be less prepared if something comes up in the moment during an important call.

Therefore, a downside is over-dependence on AI and the potential for us to outsource thinking and preparation in a way that puts us at a disadvantage when things inevitably come up. Balance needs to happen. One must remember the importance of really pushing oneself to learn and know about any particular situation, in a world where you have a genius-level guide in your pocket.