The Future Of Work Podcast With Jacob Morgan | Futurist | Workplace | Careers | Employee Experience & Engagement |

In the past when we thought about work we mostly thought of it as a job where we put in our time and then we make money to pay the bills. But the mindset around work is shifting and work is much more than just a paycheck. Now work is more about a sense of self, identity, and purpose. The impact that our work has on our customers, our communities and the world gives us a reason for being. People aren’t picking jobs for just salary anymore, they want to feel as though their work has meaning. What are you doing as an organization to account for this new way of thinking about work? Are you still thinking about job openings in your organization as a position to fill with a warm body who has decent skills? Or are you thinking about how someone can use that job to bring meaning and purpose to their life and how they will be able to impact the world around them within that role?

Haenim Sunim is the bestselling author of Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection and The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World. He is also a monk and a Zen Buddhist teacher. Haemin was born and raised in South Korea and moved to the US when he was 18 to study at Berkeley, Harvard, and Princeton. While he was working on his Master’s degree program he went back to South Korea and received the proper monastic training there.    He has over 1 million followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. His first book sold over 3 million copies and he has taught Asian religions at Hampshire College in Massachusetts for seven years.   In our society today people always seem to be so busy. We get burnout, stressed, overworked, overwhelmed. Haemin believes it is because we are goal driven, striving to get the end result as quickly as possible, and we aren’t taking time to enjoy what we are doing. We have lost the joy of living and working.

In Psychology there are two ways of thinking; System 1, which is a fast, intuitive way, almost like a gut reaction and then there is System 2, which is a more conscious, purposeful way of thinking. A lot of times in our organizations we tend to make decisions about our people initiatives and employee experiences in a System 1 type thinking. We react quickly, we don’t think about it too deeply, we just do something for the sake of saying we did something. We need to take a step back and be more conscious about our decisions around our initiatives to understand what we are doing and why. We need to act in a more mindful, purposeful way instead of reacting in a knee-jerk fashion. Our initiatives will be much more effective and successful if we can change our way of thinking.

  Christy Gillenwater is the President & CEO of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce. Christy has been in the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development field for over 20 years, mostly in various cities throughout Indiana. She moved to Chattanooga in 2017. Chattanooga is the first city to be twice named Outside Magazine’s “Best Town Ever” and it was recently ranked one of U.S. News’ Best Places to Live.    What does a Chamber of Commerce actually do? Christy shares that while every chamber has differences, one of the main focuses they all share is “the economic prosperity of their geographic region, so whether that's the county, their city, or a multi-state, multi-county area, they focus on making sure that their existing businesses can grow, thrive and prosper, that those companies have the talent they need to meet existing and future customer demands. They really think about and partner with their elected leaders, and business leaders, around what does their community need to continue to grow and diver

Looking around at the world today it is so easy to get down, be negative, give up hope, and have a bad attitude. But in order to be successful in this new world of work it is crucial to be optimistic. We have to be positive, otherwise we lose our desire to take action and move forward. So how can we be more optimistic when things seem to be so dark and crazy all around us? One thing we can do is to focus on the things we are grateful for. Come up with a list of 5 things each day that you are thankful for and think about those when you are stressed or overwhelmed. We can also think about what impact we can have and things that we can do to for our family, our community and our organizations that can make a difference. And maybe we need to limit the time we spend on social media or the time we spend watching or reading the news. It may seem like a challenging thing to do, but it is so important to our success, in work and in life, that we be optimistic.

David Epstein is the author of two top 10 New York Bestselling books, The Sports Gene and Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, which is the topic of today’s discussion. David has a fascinating and very diverse background that led him to write both of these books. David has a Master’s degree in environmental science and journalism. While he was in college studying to be a scientist he was also a competitive runner. When one of his teammates died in a race, David decided to merge his interests of science and sports together to figure out what happened and why extremely fit athletes can suffer sudden cardiac arrest. While investigating the disease he ended up writing for Sports Illustrated. During his time at Sports Illustrated he wrote about things like the only living Olympian to have survived a concentration camp and the revelation that Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez was using steroids. He was also asked to speak at a conference about sports development where he and Malcolm Gladwell,

We tend to talk about technology as if it is its own entity that has its own mind, mission and agenda. “Technology is going to replace our jobs, it is going to get out of hand, it will take over the world!” But the truth is we have control over technology, it is our choice how we use it. We can decide whether we want technology to replace us or augment us. There are already a lot of great organizations, like Accenture, Amazon and McDonald’s, making the conscious decision to use technology to augment their people. Technology is a tool, how are you going to use that tool? Are you going to let it replace jobs, or are you going to find innovative ways to use technology to help your people get their work done?

Martin Migoya is the Co-Founder and CEO of Globant, an IT and Software development company that uses the latest technologies transform organizations. They have worked with companies such as Disney, the Met Police in London, and the MTA in New York. Globant was founded back in 2003 by four founders and today they have almost 10,000 employees in 16 countries. Creating and maintaining a culture with a handful of people is one thing, but how has Globant scaled that culture while growing to almost 10,000? Martin explains that one of the main goals of their culture was to go against the typical command and control system that a lot of the professional service industry has always had. The leaders at Globant use a very unique method to give their employees autonomy and internal mobility. The company is made up of what they call Pods and they currently have around 1,200 pods. Each pod is made up of a group of 8 to 20 people, depending on the project they are working on. The pods can stay together for a few months or e

If you are a sports fan and you watch games on TV, whether you like football, soccer, baseball, hockey, etc...you may be amazed by how fast the commentators get their information. They are constantly getting real time stats so they can keep viewers informed throughout the game. During a recent conversation with Mihir Shukla, CEO of Automation Anywhere, he brought up this point about sports and he related it to organizations, asking why we don’t have this capability within organizations to have real-time, constant stats. Think about how this capability would change the way we work. It would change the way we make decisions, it would change the way we lead organizations, it would change the speed at which we can keep up with competitors.

Jim Clifton is the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, an American analytics and advisory company founded in 1935. Jim has been the CEO since 1988 and under his leadership Gallup has expanded from a predominantly US based company to a worldwide organization with 30 offices in 20 countries. Gallup is made up of 2,000 professionals plus 35,000 contract workers across 160 countries. Jim is also the co-author of a new book called It’s The Manager, which is based on data Gallup has collected from their largest study on the future of work. The book examines 52 discoveries found from that study that point to why managers are the biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success. From the Gallup study Jim and co-author Jim Harter found six things that have been done in the past that most organizations still seem to hold on to. These six things need to be changed inside of organizations immediately in order for organizations to stay relevant and successful in the future of work. One of these six changes Jim talks about

Most, if not all, of us have smartphones these days and we all have our favorite apps. Whether you like to use Instagram, Pandora, Google Maps, or Ebay, “there’s an app for that”. You may have noticed that every once in awhile your apps will update. Just like the apps on your smartphone, we--as individuals, leaders and employees--need to constantly update ourselves. We have to master learning how to learn so that we can keep our skills up to date. This is the way to succeed in the future of work and the way to futureproof your career. What kind of an app are you and how often are you taking time to update your skills?

Last week I went to social media to find out what your questions are related to leadership, employee experience, and the future of work. You asked and now today, I answer. The following questions are the ones I am addressing on today’s episode:   Often leaders are on the fence about investing in employee experience, especially when it requires outside support or consulting. What are the top 3 things you've heard from leaders that have pushed them to actually take action on an employee experience shift? Would you make any changes to your top 5 soft skills for the future (perpetual learning, accountability, empathy, self-awareness, entrepreneurial thinking) if you were to create the list at this moment again? What are the top 5 hard skills that will be relevant in the future? Now, it seems it is programming, however, a lot of it will be probably replaced by AI, therefore what hard skills will be the most relevant in the future? If you were responsible for employee engagement and happiness in a company, what wo

There are countless conversations, concerns, theories and ideas about the future of work. Will AI and automation take over? Will we experience major job loss? Will there be a ton of new jobs created? Will we all be on Universal Basic Income and be able to do whatever we want? But what if the future of work is exactly the way it is now? What if in the future of work there is still a majority of workers around the world who don’t like their jobs, who are disengaged and who are not treated well by their organizations? This is something we need to think about and also consider a major concern. We need to make sure that in the future of work we create jobs that are meaningful, organizations that are human, and work that we actually want to do.

Ed McLaughlin is the President of Operations and Technology at Mastercard, where he has worked for the past 14 years. In his current role Ed oversees all of Mastercard’s technology functions including the global network, processing platforms, information security, and technology operations. As Ed points out, working in technology doesn’t mean he is sitting in a cubicle coding all day. Work in technology is very much a people centered role. “I think technology has always been people at its heart. What really matters is who are the people, and how well we use the stuff, how good we're at it, and how much we understand what all of that's for. Technology is always for a purpose, and it's people that give it that purpose. Yeah, I spend a lot of time. I still code every once in a while, but it's not the work of doing it, it's really working together to create the value that is. I think just about everything we do is either done through or with technology these days. It's just really how we make things, how humans w

Sam Walton was the creator of Walmart and Sam’s Club, two hugely successful retailers that have been around for many, many years. He had a practice that he carried out for many years at the beginning of his career that we may view as simple nowadays, but it was extremely effective and, I think, something we can learn from today. Sam would take a yellow notepad and walk around his store. He would stop and engage with both employees and customers as he walked around and he would ask them questions--how’s it going? What is it like to work here? What do you find frustrating? What do you like about the store? He would then take his notes from these conversations to the leadership team and they would make decisions based on the feedback from the employees and customers. My question for you is, what are you doing today to replicate that practice? Where is your yellow notepad? With technology, of course, we are able to do this at a much larger scale. But it is important to be human, it is important to get face-to-fac

Amy Philbrook is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Fidelity Investments, a financial services company with around 50,000 employees. She’s been with Fidelity for 24 years working in almost every department. She started her career there in customer service answering phones. “Diversity is the presence of differences and inclusion is a leveraging those differences to create value,” Amy says. They are two separate things and you can easily have one without the other. It’s easy to feel included on a team full of people who are just like you. And you can have a very diverse team, but if you don’t create an environment that is inclusive and that encourages everyone to share their ideas, those differences won’t really matter. You have to have both diversity and inclusion. As the head of D&I, Amy works closely with the People Analytics team at Fidelity to make sure they leverage data in order to are make the best choices for the organization. “Data is the foundation for every decision you make in corporate Ame

One of the common questions I have been asked in the past is, how do we empower our employees. For me the answer has always been about investing in employee experience. But lately I have been thinking about the root cause of this problem. Why do we need to empower our people in the first place? If you think about an employee’s first day at work, they are already engaged, excited, they want to be there. They are already empowered. The problem lies with us as leaders. We actually disempower our employees, not on purpose, but over time it happens. We bog our employees down with rules, regulations, policies, hierarchy, bureaucracy and other outdated workplace practices. And then once we bog them down and strip them of their power we ask, “how do we empower our employees?”. Instead of empowering them, we need to figure out how to not disempower them to begin with.

Having great leadership inside of an organization is critical. An organization can succeed or fail based on how it is lead. I’ve had some great discussions on the podcast over the years on this topic of leadership and today I’m sharing a few of my favorite clips. Garry Ridge is the President and CEO of WD-40. Garry knows a lot about leadership as he has been a leader inside of WD-40 for over 30 years in various roles including Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. He also co-authored the book “Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A”. Garry defines his role as a leader as “taking care of people” and he believes wholeheartedly in the concept of servant leadership. He says, “As we stand as leaders, it's our job to ensure that we have a viable strategy, we have a business model, we have resources, we have goals, we have all of the things that it takes to have a business that can perform. Once we've done that, we become the servant. And it's

AI and Automation is still at the forefront of so many conversations that business leaders are having. And the core issue that continues to be the main focus of these conversations is whether we are going to create more jobs than we replace or vice versa. I have a different concern when it comes to AI and Automation. My concern is, are we going to create jobs that people actually want. What if we are able to create enough new jobs to make up for those replaced by technology, but they are jobs that people hate. What if they are jobs that make people feel like cogs? What if these jobs leave them feeling disengaged or undervalued? Are these jobs worth creating? So the conversation I think we need to be focusing on now is, how do we create new jobs that people actually want to have?

Ashley Goodall is that SVP of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco and the author of the new book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World. Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent 14 years at Deloitte where he worked in several roles, including Director and Chief Learning Officer, Leadership Development. When conducting research for the book, Ashley and co-author Marcus Buckingham found that a lot of the “basic truths” people think they know about work are actually not true at all. These nine lies that they found are based on data and evidence from the real world of work, it’s not just an opinion or a philosophy. These nine lies found in the world of work are: People care which company they work for The best plan wins The best organizations cascade goals People are well rounded People need feedback People can reliably rate other people People have potential Work life balance matters most Leadership is a thing If you are like me, reading through the list you may be surprised to see a