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

Susan Steele is the former CHRO at Millward Brown, the former CHRO at Deloitte Consulting and currently she is an Executive Partner of Global Talent & Engagement at IBM. Steele has had repeated success at building and turning around the HR function, driving new sources of revenue, enhancing client care and improving business results. With IBM’s more than 350,000 employees around the globe, there is a great deal of innovation in HR. For example, when a candidate is using a cognitive tool called Watson – a job finder or candidate fit tool - it can assist them in the application process.  In fact, anyone can use Watson, just go to IBM.com and look for the career site. Watson is part of the career page. Most recruiters are working on filling 10 -15 roles at any one time. Using Watson to prioritize the candidates is very useful. Recruiters also use Watson to use to see which candidates will be successful. Even with all the Watson technology, it is still only making recommendations to humans. It isn’t handing o

Bill Schmarzo, author of “Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business” and “Big Data MBA: Driving Business Strategies with Data Science”, is responsible for setting strategy and defining the Big Data service offerings for Dell EMC’s Big Data Practice. As a CTO within Dell EMC’s 2,000+ person consulting organization, he works with organizations to identify where and how to start their big data journeys. He is a University of San Francisco School of Management (SOM) Executive Fellow where he teaches the “Big Data MBA” course. Big Data is a term. The adjective ‘big’ has no meaning. Most companies are interested in looking at the ‘boat load of data’ they have but are not sure what to do with it. Right now, companies are only looking at the data to see ‘what happened’. “The biggest challenge from IT side and business side is to understand how they can understand data to effectively power their business model.” Dell is using data to do predictive maintenance on their equipment. The goal is to fix devices b

Jacob Morgan is an author, speaker and futurist living in the Bay Area. He recently started a new Facebook group called, The future if. This group is a global community of business leaders, authors, and futurists who explore what our future can look like IF certain technologies, ideas, approaches and trends actually happen.   Jacob is also working on a new course called The Future of Work Crash Course. This will go live in a few weeks. It is a companion course for his newest book, The Employee Experience Advantage.   He is looking at writing another book, sometime in the next few years. In addition, Jacob is looking at creating more interesting podcasts and interviewing new, fascinating guests.  What themes have stood out for Jacob from hosting this podcast?  First of all, Jacob says he’s learned a lot in the past 3 years and it turned out that a lot of people also enjoyed learning along with him. The podcast gets about 4000 – 5000 listens per episode, about 30,000 downloads per month.   One thing

Today’s guest is Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. During our conversation Seth talks about what it was like to work at Google and why he left, how he went about analyzing the data for his book, why he believes we are all liars, and what he learned about our true human nature.   Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has used data from the internet -- particularly Google searches -- to get new insights into the human psyche. A book summarizing his research, Everybody Lies, was published in May 2017. He worked for one-and-a-half years as a data scientist at Google and is currently a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times. He is a former visiting lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Seth received his BA in philosophy from Stanford, and his PhD in economics from Harvard. The area of big data that Seth researches is ‘social science questions about what people want and need’. It is very straight

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder and senior partner of Box of Crayons, a company that works with organizations, ranging from AstraZeneca to Xerox, to help them do more great work. A Rhodes scholar who earned both arts and law degrees with highest honors from Australian National University and an Master’s degree from Oxford, he is a popular speaker at business and coaching conferences, and was named Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006 He is also the author of a number of books, his latest book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, was published in February 2016 and is a bestseller. Bungay Stanier talks about how it is possible, in 10 minutes or less, to ask strategic questions to drive changes in behavior, have a more engaged, smart, autonomous team that will allow you to work less hard and have more impact …if you stay curious. The 7 essential coaching questions that he talks about in his book are: What’s on your mind? This open ended question brings up things t

Cathy O’Neil is a mathematician who has worked as a professor, hedge-fund analyst and data scientist. Cathy founded ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company, and is the author of Weapons of Math Destruction.  Cathy says she was always a math nerd. She loves the beauty of mathematics, and says it is almost an art – the cleanliness of it. One of her favorite things is that math is the same no matter what country you go to. She also had had an interest in the business world, which led her from academia to work as a hedge fund quantitative analyst.   Big Data is both a technical and marketing term. The technical term depends on the technology you are using. Big data used to mean that it was more data than you could fit on your computer – now it means more that you can perform in a simple way – that it needs to be put it into another form before it can be used.  The marketing term, ‘big data’ is misleading. However, it represents the belief that you can collect data for one thing but then the same data can be

Perez-Breva, PhD is an expert in the process of technology innovation, an entrepreneur, and the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong. (MIT Press 2017). Currently Perez-Breva directs the MIT Innovation Teams Program, MIT’s hands-on innovation program jointly operated between the Schools of Engineering and Management. During his tenure, i-Teams has shepherded over 170 MIT technologies to discover a path to impact. He has taught innovating as a skill worldwide to professionals and students from all disciplines; and has gotten them started innovating from pretty much anything: hunches, real-world problems, engineering problem sets, and research breakthroughs. There is a lot of confusion around the term Artificial Intelligence – AI. What is it? “Today AI is essentially an aspiration. What we do have is – a lot of – automation, machine learning, data learning and robotics.” The dream is to have a partner. Google s

Blake Morgan is a keynote speaker, a Customer Experience Futurist and author of the new book, "More is More: How The Best Companies Work Harder And Go Farther To Create Knock Your Socks Off Customer Experiences.”  She is also my wife. Blake is an adjunct faculty member in Rutgers University’s executive education MBA program. She contributes to Forbes, the Harvard Business Review and the American Marketing Association. She hosts The Modern Customer Podcast and a weekly customer experience video series on YouTube.  More is More is about hard work. Blake says that companies today cannot sit on their laurels. “The only thing that will differentiate themselves from their competitors is customer experience.” Customer experience is what the customer thinks of the brand. It doesn’t matter what a company thinks, the customer has        preconceived ideas of what it is.  The book discusses – a ‘D.O. M.O.R.E.’ framework.  This is not just spending more money but making customers lives easier and better.  Do More comes

Nilofer Merchant is the author of The Power of Onlyness and the recipient of the Thinkers 50 #1 Future Thinker Award. Nilofer began her career in business 25 years ago as an administrative assistant, and quickly rose to division leader, to CEO to board member of a NASDAQ-traded company.  She has personally launched more than 100 products, netting $18B in sales and has held executive positions at Fortune 500 companies like Apple and Autodesk to startups in the early days of the Web (Golive/ later bought by Adobe).  Logitech, Symantec, HP, Yahoo, VMWare, and many others have turned to her guidance on new product strategies, entering new markets, defending against competitors, and optimizing revenues.   The term ‘Onlyness’ was coined by Merchant because it captured something that couldn’t be characterized in any other way. The way in which ideas are becoming the nucleus of all valued creation, it’s no longer about organizations or the capital that comes from that – it’s about ideas. ‘Onlyness’, is the spot in

Leena Nair is the Chief Human Resources Officer for Unilever. Since 1992, when she joined Unilever as a trainee, Leena has had many firsts to her credit. Prior to her current role, she undertook a wide range of HR roles in India  and currently, she is the first female and youngest ever CHRO of Unilever. Unilever is a Dutch-British transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands and London, United Kingdom. Its products include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company and is also the world's largest producer of food spreads, such as margarine. With 170,000 employees, Unilever is one of the oldest multinational companies; its products are available in about 190 countries. “I can’t talk about being ‘more human’ if I am not living it every minute of the day.” Leena’s commitment to creating a more human experience is embodied in the way she functions each day. She gives 100% of her attention to the people she is mee

Dr. John J. McGowan,  is a PhD and he serves as the NIAID Deputy Director for Science Management. In this position, Dr. McGowan provides leadership for scientific, policy, business, and administrative management of the Institute and conducts senior-level interactions with the extramural community, other National Institutes of Health (NIH) components, and the NIH Office of the Director.   The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It is comprised of 27 separate institutes and centers of different biomedical disciplines and is responsible for many scientific accomplishments, including the discovery of fluoride to prevent tooth decay, the use of lithium to manage bipolar disorder, and the creation of vaccines against hepatitis, Haemophilus influenzae (HIB), and human papillomavirus (HPV).  NIH represents a different world than private sector organizations – the public sector. For example, they are requi

Nolan Bushnell is a technology pioneer, entrepreneur and engineer. Often cited as the father of the video game industry, he is best known as the founder of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese. Currently, he is Co-Founder/Chairman at Modal VR, HearGlass Inc. and Brainrush, where he is devoting his talents to enhancing and improving the educational process by integrating the latest in brain science.  Atari was started in September 1970. Everything about it was hard. This was before the microprocessor was invented. It was a ‘paranoid’ company; it always felt like others were at their back. Mostly, there was a sense of urgency to get things to market within the shortest time possible.   It was also a very innovative culture. Perhaps the first to have a beer tap in the office! The ‘beer light’ was lit every night at 6 pm – people were encouraged to come in and share their problems and also their ideas. This informal communication style was purposeful; there were no executive parking spots. This egalitarian

Georgia Collins is the Senior Managing Director and Co-Leader of the Workplace Strategy Practice at CBRE. CBRE is a Global commercial real estate company that ‘helps clients identify opportunities to reduce and/or reallocate their costs, more effectively manage their resources, improve employee engagement and make decisions faster’.  With specific responsibility for research and development, Collins’ focus is on enhancing and expanding their service offerings so that clients can better understand, and more effectively deliver, environments and services that improve employee effectiveness and act as competitive differentiators in the war for talent. Collins has more than 15 years of experience in the field of workplace consulting. A recognized leader in the industry, Collins’ project experience spans a wide range of markets and industries. Prior to joining CBRE, Collins led strategic business consultancy DEGW’s North American practice where she led significant engagements for companies like Autodesk, Cisco, eB

John Hass is the Chairman, President and CEO of Rosetta Stone, a language and literacy company with around 1,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. Prior to Rosetta Stone, Hass spent two decades at Goldman Sachs both in New York and in Chicago. He was in the advisory part of the company working with Fortune 500 companies around the world on strategic initiatives.  Learning another language has a lot of benefits, whether you are taking a language class in school as a 4th grader or whether you are learning some key phrases in another language for business purposes as a 40 year old. Some of the impacts that go beyond just learning another language, are creating a cultural awareness, inspiring empathy and rewiring your brain to make it easier for you to learn in general. Hass says learning another language is, “a demonstration of a willingness to meet someone halfway, when you’re working with someone cross border, cross culturally, your willingness to speak their language, to be part of their environment

Dr. Alissa Johnson, aka Dr. Jay,  is the Chief Information Security Officer for Xerox Corporation.  She is also the former Deputy Chief Information Officer of the Executive Office of the President. Dr. Jay is an IT strategist and visionary with experience in government and private industry. As the world goes to a paper-less society, Xerox Corporation is focusing on companies’ document workflow. They work to ensure that all of these assets are protected, crossing many boundaries. Dr. Jay’s department looks at both the offensive and defensive aspects of cyber security in order to anticipate all of the things that ‘might happen tomorrow and five years from now’.  She describes how organizations get billions of attempts of hacking a month. Due to the constant onslaught of potential hacking, it has required companies to collaborate and share information to work to offset the threats.  The hackers are automated so this has required companies to think along the same lines. Her advice is to ‘protect the crown jewels’

Seth Godin is the author of 18 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth founded both Yoyodyne and Squidoo. His blog (which you can find by typing "seth" into Google) is one of the most popular in the world.  His newest book, What To Do When It's Your Turn, is a bestseller. Godin says that it is important to define work. People have been brainwashed to think that work is something where we need to ‘do what we are told’ – that it is all about compliance. People that go out on their own – freelancers - fall into two camps. The first are those that are ‘workers without a boss’.  They do fine work when they have a client that acts like their boss and then they get freaked out when they can’t

Jon Gordon is a best-selling author whose books and talks have inspired readers and audiences around the world. Gordon’s principles have been put to the test by numerous Fortune 500 companies, professional and college sports teams, school districts, hospitals and non-profits. He is the author of 17 books including 5 best-sellers: The Energy Bus, The Carpenter, Training Camp, You Win in the Locker Room First and most recently, The Power of Positive Leadership. Gordon explains how - from the brink of bankruptcy - he built up a personal brand to write best-selling books and develop a very successful speaking career.  He describes that he tackled this by being very purposeful and ‘building a brand and business’.  The process was that he: Created a website – added events and articles Wrote a one page overview of his speaking topics – The first was 5 Ways to Become Addicted to Positive Energy Sent out 1000’s of emails with the one page – 99% did not respond Eventually got a speaking gig with the Jaguars team and t

David Deming is the Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses broadly on the economics of education, with a particular interest in the impact of education policies on long-term outcomes other than test scores. Before becoming a professor at Harvard, David attended Berkeley and Ohio State University where he was trained as an economist. He has always been motivated by policy oriented questions and how economics can affect the real world. When asked if there is a skills gap, Deming indicated that if you look back to the job market 30 years ago organizations would hire people with few skills but then they would invest in those people to train them on the job. They were willing to take a chance on the new graduates. Now, the jobs are more fluid, employers don’t want to pay to train employees and then have the employees leave a short time later. So we have people gra

Steven Tobin is a Senior Economist and the Team Leader at the Research Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and currently heads up the Policy Assessment Unit. His team is currently focused on undertaking policy assessments across a range of labor market and social issues. Before joining the ILO, Steven held several management positions at both the Federal and Provincial level of the Canadian government. The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers representatives of 187 member States , to set labor standards, develop policies and devise programs promoting decent work for all women and men. One trend that Tobin is looking at now is unemployment. There has been a downturn in Latin America which is pushing the global unemployment lower. The US and Canada have been doing well in this area but the lower numbers in emerging countries are negatively affecting overall rates. This downward trend impacts us all as the world is becoming more

Monica Pool Knox is the Head of Global Talent Management at Microsoft Enterprises.  She started with GTE (which would later become Verizon) and since then she has worked at several large companies including Pepsico, Sony, Twitter and she is now at Microsoft. Microsoft has 120,000 full time employees in 109 countries. But they also have a contingent workforce which is larger than their full time workforce! Contingent workers are doing everything that full time workers are doing, however, they allow for flexibility for the company. They may move to another part of the company or leave altogether once the assignment is completed. Microsoft also has a third classification of workers – full time employees that can be redeployed to another part of the company. This often meets the needs of both the employee and company. “Talent in the workplace – people want different experiences, different skills,”  Pool Knox says. People used to look at a company’s financial records but now things have changed and the mission and