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

Doug DeVos is the co-Chairman and former CEO of Amway, the world’s largest direct selling company that provides health, beauty, and home care products. The company was actually founded over 60 years ago by Doug’s father and his father’s best friend. The company now has around 15,000 employees.  Doug has been inducted into the U.S. Direct Selling Association Hall of Fame and he received the Direct Selling Education Foundation’s Circle of Honor award. He currently chairs the Executive Committee for the National Constitution Center and he is a chairman of the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations. The world has been going through some challenging times over the past year with the pandemic, political unrest, extreme weather, and social injustice. Businesses are having to learn how to adapt quickly.  The founders of Amway, Doug’s father, Rich, and his father’s best friend, Jay, were no strangers to tough times. Growing up Rich’s family went through the Great Depression, they didn’t even have a dime to th

When was the last time you did something to recognize your people? I'm amazed at how easy it is to show appreciation, yet how few of us (especially #leaders) actually do it! Here are some super simple ideas for you:

Marc Randolph is the co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix. He also served on the board of Netflix up until 2003. And Netflix wasn’t his only startup, he’s founded or co-founded 6 other successful startups. He is also the author of the bestselling book, That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea.  From very early on Marc was entrepreneurial. As a kid he was always trying to find problems and unique ways to solve them. He sold seeds door to door, did candy arbitrage, he even carried a notebook around with him to write down invention ideas he had. He was always starting clubs and groups and coming up with products throughout high school and college. And as Marc shares, one of the keys to being an entrepreneur is practice, practice, practice.  In his early career Marc had a small startup that he was helping run. After the company was sold he had to find something else to do so he went to work at another startup company which just happened to be led by a man named Reed Hastings. 

One aspect of the servant mindset is practicing self-care. This is something we often forget, especially in times of crisis. You won’t be able to serve others if you are not your best self. So make sure you’re taking care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Even with the pandemic, I still make time to exercise each day, eat healthy, and spend time working on #chess because these things make me happy! What are you doing to look after yourself during these tough times?

Hubert Joly is the former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy. Currently he is a professor at Harvard Business School, he is on the board of two companies--Johnson & Johnson and Ralph Lauren. He is coaching and mentoring a number of CEOs and senior leaders and he is writing a new book which is set to come out next May titled: The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism.  Hubert was elected a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He was honored as one of the 25 most influential executives of the business travel industry in 2006 and 2009 by Business Travel News Magazine. He was voted one of the top 100 CEOs on Glassdoor in 2017 and 2018. And he was named one of the best CEOs in the world by the CEOWorld Magazine.  He didn’t always dream of being a leader. In fact, when he was 10 years old he wanted to be a vet and then in high school, he felt his career would be in economics. After college, he spent 12 years at McKinsey & Company as a consultant before ultimat

I have witnessed first hand the difference between sympathy and empathy when I worked with two different companies. In the first company, there was a relatively new employee being introduced to a senior leader. The new employee was talking about how nervous she was, how she wanted to make an impact, and how she wasn’t sure she was doing a good job. The senior leader said, “That’s pretty tough, I'm sorry that you feel that way. But don't worry, I’m sure you'll be able to get through it. ” A couple of months later, the same thing happened at another company. The senior leader sat down with the employee and asked her to share more about her fears and struggles within the company. The senior leader also shared his experience when he was new and told her that he’s always there to help her. That is the difference of sympathy and empathy. The first leader just showed sympathy by saying “I’m sorry”. The second leader showed empathy by putting himself in the employee’s shoes and matching his emotions by relieving his

Jim Heppelmann is the CEO of PTC, a technology software company with 6,500 employees in 30 countries. Jim was named one of “7 IoT leaders to Watch in 2017” by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he was recognized as “IoT CEO of the Year” by PostScapes, “Technology CEO of the Year” by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and he received the CAD Society Leadership Award for his work with the Internet of Things.  Together with Harvard Professor, Michael Porter, Jim has co-authored three highly influential articles on the transformational impact of the Internet of Things on business.  Jim grew up on a dairy farm in Minnesota as one of eight children. It was during his upbringing on the farm that he really learned the value of hard work as well as the ability to take things apart and put them back together, which is in part why he was successful as a mechanical engineer.  It was actually one of his older sisters who inspired him to attend college and study to become an engineer in the first place. After she gr

Leadership is a lot like working out. When you work out and really push yourself, you're actually tearing down your muscles. When you recover and rest, your muscles heal and become stronger. In other words, before you become bigger and stronger, you first have to go through a process of tearing down and rebuilding. And a lot is the same for leadership. If you want to become a better, future-ready leader, you first have to go through a process of tearing down and getting rid of your outdated ways of thinking about work and leadership. You have to push yourself and be uncomfortable in order to see results later, just like working out.

Dan Pink is the bestselling author of six books including Drive, To Sell is Human, and his newest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. In 2019 London based Thinkers 50 named Dan the 6th most influential management thinker in the world.  He has contributed to Fast Company, Wired, The New York Times, Slate and others. And prior to working on his own, he worked in several political positions, including chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore from 1995-1997. Dan has been writing for around 20 years and a lot has changed in the world of work since he first began. But his first book was actually ahead of the game back in 2001 when he wrote Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live. He recognized the trend before the iPhone came out and just a few years after broadband internet.  Now the numbers have risen quite a bit and we are seeing a lot more people go off to work for themselves, thanks to advances in technology and the changing relationship

How crazy is this? Most people don't enter #leadershipdevelopment programs until they are in their 40s, yet they actually become leaders in their 20s and 30s! This means that most #leaders spend 10-15 years leading others before they are actually taught how to lead. It's no wonder so many employees around the world aren’t engaged in their jobs--we simply don't have enough leaders who are taught how to lead effectively. This is because of the outdated "climb the corporate ladder" mentality that has been around for decades. The idea is you can only be taught how to lead after you spend years working for a company, which we all know is now no longer the case.

Arthur Blank is the co-founder of The Home Depot, a home improvement retail chain which today has a market capitalization of over 300 billion and over 400,000 employees. Arthur is also the author of the new book, Good Company, which comes out on September 15. Arthur has been named one of the world’s 100 greatest living business minds by Forbes in 2017, Executive of the Year 2018 by Sports Business Journal, and one of the 50 most influential people in Sports 2016, 2017, and 2018 by Sports Business Journal. Arthur owns the Atlanta Falcons NFL team and the Atlanta United Soccer team. His family businesses also include the nationwide PGA Tour Superstore, three ranches in Montana, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium which hosted the 2019 Super Bowl. Under his leadership The Home Depot was voted America’s most socially responsible company in 2001. How Home Depot Came to Be Back in the 1970s Arthur and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus were working together as employees of Handy Dan, one of the first home improvement retail

Leadership starts from within. It’s not just about leading others, you should also lead yourself. Leading yourself means that you set your own goals, learn new skills and mindsets, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and are the director of your career and life. You can't always rely on others to tell you what to do or what to learn. Ultimately, nobody is going to look out for you but YOU!

David Cote is the former Chairman and CEO of Honeywell and author of the bestselling book, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term.  During his time at Honeywell David fixed a toxic work culture and grew the company’s market capitalization from around 20 billion to 120 billion, delivering returns of 800%. Currently David is Executive Chairman of Vertiv Holdings Co, a global data center products and services provider. He is a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group on Foreign Relations and the Conference  of Montreal.  David’s journey to being CEO is anything but ordinary. He nearly quit high school, because although he was good at school, he hated it. He ended up sticking with it and became the first one in his family to graduate high school. David was accepted to the University of New Hampshire, but decided he didn’t want to pursue college so he went to work as a mechanic with his dad in a small garage. After that job didn’t pan out he we

Javed Khan is SVP and GM at Cisco Collaboration, a multi-billion dollar division inside of Cisco, a worldwide leader in IT, networking, and cybersecurity solutions. Prior to his current role, Javed ran Cisco’s Cloud Calling business as the VP and General Manager and before that he led the Webex Meetings business unit.  Just like many organizations around the world, when Covid first started becoming a global issue Cisco had to take action in order to keep business going while also enabling employees to work from home. Because of the products they build, they had some advantages over other companies as they already had communication and collaboration tools everyone was familiar with.  But one challenge they had to overcome was an overnight need for their products from existing and new customers. The demand for their products was suddenly three times bigger in a very short period of time. So as a company they had to hurry to scale very quickly in a time when they also needed to move their workforce out of the of

Collaboration has never been more important than it is now. We are living in a globalized world where boundaries don't seem to exist anymore. And because of this, we’re now seeing more diversity in the workforce. We are also seeing more and more remote workers. According to a study by Upwork, 63% of employers have remote teams. That is why collaboration is crucial in the future of work. Organizations need to focus more on collaboration tools that will enable them to connect their people seamlessly.

Blair Sheppard is Head of Global Strategy and Leadership for PwC, a global network of firms delivering world-class assurance, tax, and consulting services for businesses. He is also the author of the new book, Ten Years to Midnight: Four Urgent Global Crises and Their Strategic Solutions, which came out on August 4th.    Prior to PwC, Blair spent the majority of his career as a professor at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. During his time there he also served as Founding CEO and Chairman of Duke Corporate Education and as Dean of the school. As Dean, Blair was the primary architect of Duke Kunshan University which opened in 2014.    Blair was the first recipient of faculty of the year at Fuqua, he received the Business Person of the Year award for Education in 2011 by Triangle Business Journal, and the Eminent Scholar Award from the Institute of Finance at Frankfurt University in 2007.    The concept behind Blair’s book, Ten Years to Midnight, started with a conversation he had with his boss at

There was one question top CEOs had a hard time answer… But first, some context. Over the past 18 months, I had the privilege to interview some of the world's top CEOs for my book, The Future Leader. I spoke with CEOs from companies like Best Buy, Audi, KPMG, Oracle, SAP, Verizon, MasterCard, Royal Caribbean, InterContinental Hotels Group, and dozens of others. I was trying to understand how leadership is changing what leaders need to do in order to adapt and be successful in the new world of work. I asked these CEOs about trends, skills, mindsets, challenges, and everything and anything in between. All the leaders gave me fantastic answers, wonderful stories, and profound insights, everything flowed very easily...until we got to THE QUESTION. "If I came from another planet and had no concept of 'leader' or 'leadership,' how would you explain it to me?" This is where the awkward pauses started… The problem is we don't spend enough time thinking about this because we all assume we know what good and bad leade

Leadership isn't just about what you know how to do, it's also about how you think...your mindset. What mindsets do you as a leader need to possess? There are 4 of them that over 140 of the world's top CEOs from companies like Audi, KPMG, Best Buy, Oracle, Unilever, MasterCard, SAP, and dozens of others identified as being most crucial for current and future leaders. Global Citizen Leaders who embody the global citizen mindset think globally and embrace diversity. Not only do leaders need to consider how to enter new markets but they must also understand how to spread ideas and messages and how to find the best talent regardless of where in the world they might be. As a new or existing leader you will also have to work with, communicate, collaborate, and lead individuals who don’t think like you, look like you, act like you, or believe in the same things that you believe in. Servant Being a leader doesn’t mean that you get to sit at the top of the pyramid and tell everyone else what to do. It means that you s

Do you regularly find your employees competing against each other? This competitive type of culture is disappearing as people start to realize that team success is more important than individual success. If your organization doesn't have this definition of teamwork, it’s time for you to change it. Start by understanding your employees, team members, and leaders as human beings, not just as cogs or worker bees who show up to work every day. Once you understand your peers as individuals, you'll really get a strong sense of where you might be able to step up and do something small to make their lives easier.

Leadership is changing...you as a leader MUST change, and perhaps more importantly, we should all DEMAND that our leaders change. It's necessary for the very survival of our organizations.   Things like globalization, the changing nature of talent, AI, and technology, the emphasis on purpose and meaning, and the demand for more transparency mean that our organizations are going to look fundamentally different than they did in the past. As a result, we need a new breed of leaders.   Research by DDI found that only 14% of organizations have a "strong bench," which is ready-now leaders who can step to replace those who retire or move on (DDI). Half of the organizations surveyed by DDI say their leaders are not skilled to lead effectively today and 71% say their leaders are not ready to lead their organizations in the future.   If you want to be an effective leader (now and in the future), someone who positively impacts your organization, your people, and your community, then these are the 5 skills that you need