Ep. 227 - Diana Wu David, Author of Future Proof: Reinventing Work in the Age of Acceleration on the Changing Landscape of Work

Inside Outside

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we speak with Diana Wu David, Author of Future Proof: Reinventing Work in the Age of Acceleration. We talked about the changing landscape of work, how you can better prepare for a 100-year career, and the opportunities that can be found in remote online communities. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger founder of insideoutside.io, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends and collaborative innovation.

Interview Transcript with Diana Wu David

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Diana Wu David she's the author of the new book Future Proof: Reinventing Work in the Age of Acceleration. Welcome Diana.

Diana Wu David: Thanks so much great to be here, Brian.

Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to have you on the show. Actually, we're doing this from Hong Kong, one of my favorite cities in the world. You actually teach as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, E-MBA Global Asia. You're a former Financial Times executive. You worked with clients like Mandarin Oriental, World Bank, Expedia, Credit, Suisse, and your career is long and amazing.

You actually started your career working with Henry Kissinger. I wanted to have you on the show because you've got a book out. And you actually wrote this book futureproof before the pandemic and now we're post pandemic. What are your thoughts of where we sit now versus when you wrote the book then?

Diana Wu David: When I wrote the book, it was to convince people that we were going into this new world where things would be globalized and lot more remote and virtual and more flexible, and that fundamentally companies needed to change.

And the hypothesis really was that people were going to have to change. Individuals would have to take agency over their own careers and change because companies weren't moving fast enough. Fast forward to, I think February I did a podcast and we were talking about China's largest work from home experiment, and now it's become the entire world's largest work from home experiment.

So, yeah, I think right now it's not a hard sell to say that we're going to be working virtually. It's not a hard sell to say that we're going to have to be more flexible and companies have actually massively accelerated to accommodate this. So, the landscape has changed quite a bit.

Brian Ardinger: Totally agree. And you, and I've worked in the space of innovation in that for a while. And sometimes it felt five years ago, like you're pushing this rock up the hill, like no, really this disruption thing's coming. And I think, you know, with the pandemic, it really has accelerated, and people are now fundamentally understanding what that means.

I don't think we're at the point where they fundamentally understand what to do about it yet. So that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show to talk about the specific steps and the way to approach this idea that you're going to have to reinvent yourself. And especially in, I think you wrote in the book that, you know, we're having longer careers, you know, there's a a hundred-year career kind of things. Let's dive into the book a little bit and talk about some of the skillsets and the mindsets and the tool sets that you recommend for understanding this new world of acceleration we're living in.

Diana Wu David: Absolutely. I had so many people that I met that when I was at Financial Times, we were doing the board director program and I launched that as an internal entrepreneur, and they were all talking about what's next. You know, they were, I would say 45, 55, 65 and really could see that they would have this massive amount of time where they could continue working and continue learning.

And yet company lifespans are predicted by a firm like Innosight to be averaging 12 years. Yeah. In a couple of decades. So, people are waking up to the idea and certainly now with COVID and companies being under even more pressure, everybody's waking up to the idea that I'm going to have to re-invent no longer can I learn everything go work and retire.

It's very much going to be sort of looping model of I'm going to work a little bit. I'm going to learn on the job. Then I'm going to take a break and learn some more and upscale and rescale and pivot and have to go get a new job. And I shouldn't say half to get a new job. I have the opportunity to do something completely new. So, I think it's really exciting.

Brian Ardinger: I guess there's core things. First thing you have to probably do is recognize like I'm in a new world, I'm okay with that. And then you probably start thinking about, well, how do I apply my old skills to this new environment? And so maybe talk through that early stage process of really understanding and thinking through what should I do next?

Diana Wu David: First of all, I found that a lot of leaders in particular, weren't thinking about themselves. And I think this applies across all different people in organizations where they're thinking about the business future of work, but not thinking about, gosh, what does that mean for me and my career and how it needs to change?

What do I need to proactively do? So that awareness is important. The idea that it's up to me, that I'm the captain of my own ship, as something that some people need to go through a process. And then there's four real actionable chapters in the middle of the book. And that is looking at experiment, reinvent, collaborate, and focus.

And those are really the four skills I felt we're super important in the future of work, that frankly has always been a bit the now of work. And really going into deep dives about what does that mean? I guess the first one experiment is really about getting out of our comfort zone, right? So the day that you decided, you know what I'm going to do, not only I'm going to do all the things I do, but I'm going to do a podcast, you know, that sort of.

If I want to experiment with that, not everybody does a podcast and you're like in 250 episodes or something by now, God, I can't believe it. But everybody has to take the first step. So, starting to get that muscle going of how do I do that? How do I take small steps in small and perfect actions that will test my assumptions? Give me feedback and allow me to move forward and out of my comfort zone.

Brian Ardinger: But one of the great things about where we are living, if you flip the chaos and disruption on the positive side is the opportunities are there for the individual. We talk about kind of the democratization of innovation, where everybody can be an innovator now because they're new tool sets. There’re new skillsets out there that are accessible to everyone. I'd like to get your opinion on some of the new tools sets that you see out there, things like no code or your ability to spin up a podcast or take some risks or do some experiment...