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

David Fairhurst is the Chief People Officer at McDonald’s. Prior to joining McDonald's in 2005, Fairhurst held senior roles at H J Heinz, SmithKline Beecham and Tesco. For four consecutive years (2008-2011) he was voted the UK's 'Most Influential HR Practitioner' by readers of HR Magazine and in 2012 was awarded the magazine’s first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for an HR practitioner. McDonald's is the world's leading global food service retailer who, including franchisees, employs more than 1.9 million people, in 35,000 locations serving approximately 60 million customers in more than 100 countries each day. More than 80% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local business men and women. McDonald’s is known for its operational excellence. They see this as a ‘3-legged stool’ made up by the suppliers, the franchisees and the company. McDonald’s is often a first job of many workers. Their focus on training has provided an amazing legacy of alumni employees to the restaura

Kim Scott is the New York Bestselling Author of a new book, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your Humanity  Kim is also the co-founder of Candor, Inc and co-host of the podcast Radical Candor. She led AdSense, YouTube, and Doubleclick Online Sales and Operations at Google and then joined Apple to develop and teach a leadership seminar. Kim has been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and several other tech companies Radical Candor is demonstrated when one cares personally for someone and also challenges them directly.  Great bosses can be source of growth and joy. It is evident that they care about you. They will also tell things that you need to hear. The framework consists of four points: Radical Candor – praise and then criticize Obnoxious Aggression – when you challenge but don’t care (praise that doesn’t seem sincere or criticism that isn’t delivered kindly) Manipulative insincerity – when you neither care nor challenge (non-specific praise or criticism that is not clear) Ruinou

Anindya Ghose is the Professor of IT and Business Analytics at NYU and the author of TAP: Unlocking the Mobile Economy.  He is a Professor of IT and a Professor of Marketing, at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He is also the Director of the Center for Business Analytics at NYU Stern. In 2014 he was named by Poets & Quants as one of the “top 40 outstanding business school professors under 40 in the world” and by Analytics Week as one of the “top 200 thought leaders in Big Data and Business Analytics”. The Mobile Economy is any transaction that occurs on a smart phone or tablet. It is currently more than 3 trillion dollars of the world’s economy – or 4.2% of the world’s GDP.  So we are only scratching the tip of the iceberg. Technology has changed the way companies can interact with consumers. Location accuracy came out about 10 years ago. At that point in time, people’s location could be pin-pointed within 200-300 meters (~1000 feet). Now, the latest smart phones can locate the

Today my guest is Archana Singh, the EVP and Chief Human Resource Officer at John Wiley and Sons Publishing. Join us as we talk about what transformations Wiley is going through, why these transformations are important, how to create a sense of purpose for your employees and much more. Today’s guest is Archana Singh the EVP and Chief Human Resource Officer at John Wiley and Sons Publishing. John Wiley was founded in 1807, and amazingly over 200 years later they are still going strong. They currently focus on business books, research and journal publishing with sizeable work around digital assets and learning, assessments and educational technology services, as well. Wiley is found in 60 locations across 40 different countries, employing 5000 people. There has been significant growth in the last 15 years with a blending of digital and traditional higher education publishing. How has worked changed? 1. There is more ownership as an employee of what is worked upon. Therefore, as an organization, how do we harnes

Today’s conversation is with Dr. Jody Foster, author of The Schmuck in My Office and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry. Our discussion centers around dealing with difficult people at work and learning to look for the reasons behind their annoying behaviors.   Dr. Jody Foster is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Vice Chair for Clinical Operations in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania Hospital. She attained her MBA, with a concentration in finance, from the Wharton School. She is also the author of the recently released book, The Schmuck in My Office Dr. Foster was involved in forming a program to deal with disruptive physicians which became publically offered due to interest in resolving the same issues in other settings outside of the medical field. After the program became public, Dr. Foster was approached to write the book to share the p

My conversation this week is with John Hagel, the Co-Chairman at the Center for the Edge at Deloitte, and we are talking about the future of work: what you need to know, how to prepare and what to look forward to. Today’s guest is John Hagel the Co-Chairman at the Center for the Edge at Deloitte and author of 7 books including: The Power of Pull. John leads the Silicon Valley based research center for Deloitte. Their charter is to identify emerging business opportunities that should be on the CEO's agenda, but are not, and to do the research to persuade them to put it on the agenda Automation and the future of work are part of a bigger shift of how business is changing globally. The main issue is the rapid increase of technology. Hagel believes that ‘robots can restore our humanity’. He explains that the way we define work - highly standardized and integrated tasks - will be able to be accomplished by robots – which are much more efficient than we will ever be - leaving the creative work to humans. Hagel say

This week’s guest is Daniel Franklin, the executive editor of The Economist and editor of The Economist’s annual publication The World In....  which focuses on predictions for the upcoming year. He is also the author of the book, Megatech: Technology in 2050 Looking beyond the immediate horizon is helpful when looking at future trends. In particular, Franklin looks at the drivers of change. For instance, follow the money and what does that tell you?  Look at what might hold technologies back or push them forward and that gives some insight into future trends. The title of the book – 2050- is a metaphor to encourage one’s thinking to push out to what might be possible in the future. One of the future technologies that Franklin is paying attention to is farm technology. By 2050, it is predicted that there will be 10 billion people on the earth. The need to feed all of these people is critical. Therefore, a combination of advancements – such as distant farming, the massive applications of data to farming, when

Monique Herena is the Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at BNY Mellon. As Senior Executive Vice President, Herena oversees BNY Mellon’s Human Resources and Marketing and Corporate Affairs departments. In her role as Chief Human Resources Officer, she is responsible for all human resources strategies, policies and practices. BNY Mellon, founded in 1784 by Alexander Hamilton, has 52,000 employees across 35 countries and 6 continents. They have two main businesses, investment management and investment services. The make-up of the company is diverse - 46% of the US workforce is women and 30% representing ethnically and racially diverse people. BNY believes that putting people first is critical to every aspect of their mission. It is how people experience the company – through their talent.  They invest in people, believing in the power of development- “People can always be better in the next moment than what they are right now.” They have put together a report, appropriately entitl

This week’s conversation is all about the gig economy. Listen in to find out how big the gig economy actually is, what the skills gap is and how we can fix it and how individuals and organizations can adapt to a rapidly growing gig economy.   This week's Future of Work podcast features a conversation with Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research. Steve has extensive consulting, marketing and general management experience with both large and small companies.  He has served as vice president of Corporate Marketing for Macromedia, vice president and general manager of Asia Pacific for Lotus Development Corporation and vice president of marketing for Isys Corporation. Steve's current research and consulting is focused on the future of work, the rise of the independent workforce and the impact of Big Data on small businesses. The gig/freelance/independent worker economy has two levels; those who have this as their full-time employment and those who use it as a way to supplement their income.   There are various

This week join me as I talk with Sylvia Metayer, the CEO of Worldwide Services at Sodexo, about the report that Sodexo recently conducted to find the top trends shaping the global workforce.   Sodexo is the 19th largest employer in the world. They currently employ almost 500,000 people, delivering ‘quality of life services’ to 40,000 client sites in eighty countries.  These sites include hospitals, schools and a variety of places where people work.  The services they provide range from cafeteria, maintenance, cleaning and everything that touches the employees.  Sylvia Metayer manages one-third of the employees at Sodexo, for corporate clients.  She sees her role as CEO as one in which she serves her team and her clients to focus on ensuring  a better day, believing that when people have an improved quality of life, they perform better at work.   Sodexo recently released a report on trends that are shaping the workplace in 2017. To gather the data they pulled approximately 150 experts from a variety of

Today’s guest is Sjoerd Gehring, the Global VP of Talent Acquisition at Johnson & Johnson. We are going behind the scenes of talent acquisition to explain what it is, how it works and why one size never fits one in this area.  Sjoerd Gehring, was born in the Netherlands and attended universities in Europe. He was with Accenture for almost ten years. The last two years he has been with Johnson and Johnson as Global VP of Talent Acquisition.  When asked for an overview of Talent Acquisition (TA), Gehring indicated that it was a matter of matching talent with opportunity on a massive scale. Specifically, talent needs must be defined and then an understanding is developed regarding the opportunities that are available within the organization.  In the past, HR would look to fill open positions. Now, TA is more strategic and proactive. In fact, last year Johnson and Johnson TA filled 25,000 positions. The need to be strategic at that level is massive.  The proactive strategy includes looking both inte

This week’s podcast features two guests, both from Acadian Asset Management, Churchill Franklin and John Chisholm. Join us as we discuss what Cognitive Diversity is, why it is important, why companies find it challenging to implement and where the future of finance is going. Churchill Franklin is the CEO of Acadian Asset Management and John Chisholm is the Chief Investment Officer at Acadian. Acadian is an institutional asset manager, managing roughly 75 billion for investors. They invest in equities all around the world, both in the US and developed markets, as well as emerging markets. Acadian follows a very quantitative approach towards investments. They build models that help predict returns and invest in those securities in which are believed will likely generate the best returns, to build the best portfolios. The culture is one of listening – to both clients and colleagues in trying to be proactive in responding to the market place. Acadian employs 320 people with a main office in Boston and additional

David Green joined IBM about a year ago to help IBM customers grow their people analytics and technology. He has been involved with HR since the late 90’s and also writes and speaks about data driven HR. Historically, HR decisions used ‘gut and intuition’ to drive decisions. Now the use of data in the form of people analytics is providing value, allowing better decisions to be made. One example is a large, global company that was looking at building in China. However, the head of the analytics looked at the data and discovered that it was not an ideal place to locate the company. It was found that the talent in the region was very ‘thin’.  The completion for this work group was high in the area, creating additional shortages. This would have made it difficult to not only hire the initially needed workers but then it would have also limited their planned expansion.  This company did not open there - saving money and other possible difficulties. Though there are examples such as this, there remain three areas o

Enrico Moretti is a professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research covers the fields of labor economics and urban economics.  Professor Moretti’s book, “The New Geography of Jobs”, was awarded the William Bowen Prize for the most important contribution toward understanding public policy and the labor market.   His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Atlantic, Businessweek, The Economist, The New Republic, CNN, PBS and NPR. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and the son.   When considering the overall ‘health’ of the US economy, Professor Moretti believes that it is generally good.  Compared to the time period of the great recession, job creation has picked up.  Additionally, within the last six months, wages have picked up. When asked about how to assess the ‘health’ of the economy, he suggests that rather than look at day-to-day changes, such as the media, focus on the yearly changes. That gives

Michael Dawisha has been the CIO in the division of Residential and Hospitality Services of Michigan State University for over eight years. He has previously been the CIO of a large medical non-profit organization.   As the global trend toward travel and distant communication continues, businesses are finding themselves competing with a greater number of potential employers. Talented employees are pursued and leadership is forced to make decisions that will effect if these employees stick around.   With a global trend toward technology, how does a large non-profit organization like a university keep their employees while a world of options and bigger offers await? What works and what needs to change to keep up with the new age work force?   Michael Dawisha notes the observable change from recruits being hired in with the expectation of being around for a full career. He wants the most talented employees on his team and he now has to consider the quality of life in his region compared to the world for t

Devin Fidler is the Research Director at the Institute for the Future and the Founder of Rethinkery Labs, a software defined organization that specializes in developing technologies to automate management.  Automation is definitely a hot topic these days and it is one that sits at the forefront of many discussions around the future of work. There are mainly two camps of people in this topic of discussion. There are those who feel that automation is inevitable and that while it will take some human jobs, it will also create a lot more human jobs and therefore won’t be as scary as it seems. They also believe that automation won’t take over as many jobs as some experts are predicting. The other group is made up of people who believe that there is no stopping the takeover and that automation will take over a majority of jobs and humans will be displaced.   Fidler believes that automation will definitely disrupt traditional jobs, however, he says it is not all negative. He says one of the real issues is that

This week’s guest is Yuval Noah Harari, author of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Join us as we discuss topics such as the major threats that the human race is facing, how virtual reality is similar to religion and what the future of life is going to look like in 150-200 years.   Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, a tenured professor at the Department of History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a bestselling author. Harari’s most recent book is, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. The book explores the opportunities and dangers humankind faces in this century and beyond.  Harari has always been one to ask questions and seek out reasons why things are the way they are. He has never just accepted the way we do things, but instead he enjoys digging further to see where his questions about life lead him. Harari believes that most of the big questions in life lead you across a wide variety of disciplines including biology, religion, history, economics and politics in order to find answers.

In this podcast we take a look back on some of the interviews I did in 2016 and listen to some of the past guests talk about key issues they feel are shaping the workplace of the future. In 2016 I had a lot of great conversations with a wide variety of senior leaders. Last week I took a look back on the 2016 podcast interviews and discussed six lessons I learned from my guests last year. This week I wanted to let the guests speak for themselves, so I gathered up some highlight clips from last year’s podcast interviews and put them into one podcast mashup.The subjects range from how innovation is changing to automation and AI to the six reasons why we work. The first interview I looked back on was the one with Jeff Wong, the Global Chief Innovation Officer at EY. In our discussion we talked about innovation during a disruptive era and one of the main points was about how innovation is changing. Wong said he believes that innovation is changing a lot and it is really driving companies to think about themselves

Join me as I take a look back on six lessons I’ve learned about the future of work from my podcast guests over the last year.   We are moving into a new year and I am excited to see what podcast guests we will have and the things we will learn about the future of work. I wanted to take a moment to look back over the 53 published podcasts of 2016 to discuss six lessons I learned from my guests this past year.  The first lesson I learned in 2016 is that we should be thinking of our organizations more like a laboratory and less like a factory. Over the past year I have had some great guests including the Chief HR Officer of Accenture, the Chief Innovation Officer at EY, and the President and CEO of Humanyze and all of my guests have been very honest in saying they don’t know everything. They understand that in order to be successful they have to treat their organizations like laboratories where they allow for testing, exploring, adaptation and innovation. They also embrace failure in order to learn from the

I am a big fan of stories, so this week I am trying something new for the podcast. The following story is about a well known business leader. Try to figure out who it is before the end of the story where I reveal who it is.   This young boy was born in 1971 in South Africa. All through school he was bullied and picked on for various reasons. At one point the bullying became so bad that he was thrown down a flight of stairs and he had to be hospitalized.   In order to escape his harsh reality, this young boy turned his attention to space and computers and he combined the two to create a unique space themed computer game. In order to create the game he taught himself how to code at the age of 10. He finished creating his first PC game at the age of 12 and he sold this game for $500 to PC and Office Technology Magazine.   At the age of 19 he began college where he studied dual Bachelor’s Degrees in Business and Physics. While in college he ran into money problems and had to get creative in order to make e