4 Virtues Every Successful Business Person Must Have with Diana Wu David

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of better way to find a better way and share it. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator. You are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to do it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today I've got a great guest for you. Her name is Diana Wu David. She is a best selling author and a former Financial Times executive. Diana is a top 50 global work futurist. She's an expert on effective leadership and bestselling author of the Inc. Magazine Top 10 Innovation Book, Future Proof. Reinventing Work in the Age of Acceleration. She works with leaders who want to change the game and prepare their organizations to harness acceleration disruption and drive breakthrough results. She currently lives in Hong Kong where she runs Future Proof Labs. Diana, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Gary. It's so nice to be here and to be with another better way person.

That's right. So like I mentioned, you're in Hong Kong. So what time is it right there?

It's 7am and so as a futurist who does a lot of work around the globe, I always like to say I'm calling you from the future.

Ah, yes, that's true. That's a great way to put it. So now let's go back and let's let our audience get to know you. So obviously you're in Hong Kong now, but where were you born? What were you like in high school? Let's go all the way back to that.

Wow, that is not something anyone has ever asked me on a podcast. I, I was born in New York City and I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. And what was I like in high school? So I'm a better way person now. Like Alexander Hamilton. Right. Never satisfied. That's a great. Sure, it resonates. In high school I was curious and I still am curious. And that really a red thread throughout my life of what if, you know, what, what if we did it differently? Or what if we did it better? Or how could we do something completely new? Or what if we combine these things that have never been combined before.

So if we were in high school with you and we happened to see you, what would we see?

Ah, you would see somebody who was a bit studious in the subjects that I really found interesting.

A bit mischievous, I guess.

Always stretching the rules to, to just the breaking point and sometimes more.

And somebody who did also spend a lot of time gathering people together.

So for the listeners, you're probably hearing it come through loud and clear. Diana's why is better way. Right. So she's always looking to find a better way, but how she does that is by challenging the status quo, pushing the limits, thinking differently, thinking outside the box. Ultimately what she brings is a trusting relationship where others can count on her. So we're seeing the challenge come through loud and clear as well. And so were you involved in sports? Were you involved in school? Were you. What was kind of the things that you really like to do back then?

I was involved in theater, but actually in the, in the tech side I was, can't remember what year. I was the class president for one of the years.

And really into. I was in the future Business Leaders of America club, which always makes me laugh. It sounds so, so silly. But we went and did competitions. Can't remember what. I had a really fantastic economics teacher. And so even then, you know, we did AP Economics. And he said, well, you know, a lot of this anyway, so you two guys that don't know that have already done part of the class. You go off and do something really creative that shows us a principle of economics, of macroeconomics. And we went out into the desert and we filmed the, the stuff stalled Real estate development and how that whole thing had come to pass because there was a huge amount of investment that of course, you know, interest rates went up and the entire thing stalled. And, and we made basically a documentary.

About that. And that was one of our, you know, economics, senior AP economics projects, I guess.

Okay. So graduated from high school, off to college.

Yep.

Where'd you go to college?

Occidental College in Los Angeles. I studied diplomacy in world affairs, which also fits with the Better way and the challenge and the trusted relationships.

And then went off to go work for Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State after that. And diplomacy very much, you know, always trying to find the better way, challenging things, but doing so on a basis of trusted relationships.

Yeah. Interesting. What was it like working for Henry Kissinger?

It was very different because I moved to New York from Arizona and la, where people are quite casual, to an environment, where people, you know, called each other sir and never first names. And.

And it was just an eye opening experience because I studied international relations and I went to spend a semester in Geneva at the United Nations. But I didn't really know how things worked. And so it was an opportunity for a glimpse at the, the inner workings of how things really worked. You know, the meetings, et cetera.

So were you. Yeah. Were you surprised by how things really work? Were you excited by him? Were. What was your, you know, what did you think versus what you saw?

Well, of course what I saw was that Dr. Henry Kissinger was really not asking me for my diplomacy advice, which I thought was an oversight on his part.

So all the goobers of most young people going in, I, I felt that. And what did I think? I thought, okay, well, this is fine. This is, this is good for me to know, it's good for me to know how things really work and let me see how I can play a part in this. So I, I spent a couple of years there and went off to business school, trying to kind of, you know, work my way up the ladder of.

Influence and so where did you go to business school?

Columbia Business School.

Okay, to Columbia and then. Okay, go through business school. Now you're done. Off for your first job or what came after Columbia?

Yep, off to the first job. I went straight into consulting like most good MBAs. And yeah, I didn't have that much work experience. I was one of the youngest people at Columbia Business School and probably had no, no real business being there, but with so little real business experience. So I went into consulting as a sort of way to see a lot of businesses and see how I could improve them and how I could contribute to helping them solve their problems and. And really transform their business.

Does it seem.

I don't know what the word would be odd or different now, looking back, thinking, you know, I became a consultant when I hadn't ever owned, run, or been involved with the business before, and I became a consultant to show them how to improve something I had never done.

There were. And. And I was 25.

I thought about that a lot, you know, sitting there in these big telecom companies or whatnot, thinking, wow, so I'm the one that you're paying extraordinary amounts of money to fix your problem. Um, but a lot. I was low on the totem pole and we were in teens. And.

I think what I've come to realize, you know, 25 years later, is that being the person that listens is really powerful. And that was my role. You can't find a better way if you don't know what's really going on. And most leaders and managers and big companies don't. They don't have time.

That's really interesting. So the better way is to listen.

It's a part of it for sure.

Yeah.

How do you know what's going on and how do you find a better way unless you, you know what, you know what's really going on unless you listen?

So it's funny, I had this conversation of a few weeks ago with another friend that has to. Why a better way? And I asked him, if you go into a meeting where you don't really know what, you know what they're talking about, and you're. Do you start talking right away or do you sit and listen for a while first? And he said, no, I. How can I make it better if I don't even know what's going on? Right. So you got to sit and listen. So it's kind of a better way type thing. Because there's no way to make it better if you don't even know what it is to begin with.

Absolutely, yeah.

So, okay, so you were a consultant there. For how long were you a consultant?

Two years, and then Asia.

And then you came to Asia at 27?

Yeah, something like that, yeah.

And what brought you to Asia?

I was.

Kind of bored of my consulting job and.

Just felt like there's got to be a better way.

Young, you know, working 80 hours a week, getting up at 4:30, flying to Atlanta, grinding for, you know, through these big projects.

And so I just really wanted to go abroad and travel, which has always been my great love.

For a year or whatever. So I tried to get there. And in fact, PwC, where I was working, did send me to Korea for a couple of months. But then I applied in the back of my college magazine for a grant. It's a sort of like a Fulbright grant. It's the Loose foundation, and they send young Americans who are leaders in their field to Asia for. For a year. And I got it. So I decided to go to Asia for a year. It was sort of perfect. I could go and explore and learn and be back on a growth track. And yeah, that's what happened.

Wow. 99, 1999. And so.

You know, let's just take. Think back a year before you went on that to Asia. Was Asia the top country you want? I mean, sorry, Hong Kong, was it the top destination you were thinking about?

I thought I would be sitting on a beach in Thailand teaching e commerce to basket weavers. I thought it was looking for something that was as different from New York City management consultant life as possible. And just the way things happened. I was supposed to be in Beijing. I went to Middlebury and learned Chinese the summer before. And then the joint venture fell through literally the week I got here. And I ended up in Hong Kong. So that was. That was that.

Wow.

But I did want to go to Asia. I. I mean, I. I really, I. Because I had been to Europe and spent time there, and I grew up on the border of Mexico and I thought, where else could I go that I haven't been yet? Asia would be interesting. It would be the most different place.

Wow. Okay, so 27 years old, show up in Asia. What was that like for you? You get off the plane. Can you remember back to what that was like?

I do, because I came to Hong Kong first, and I was really disappointed because it was so similar to New York. It was sort of not different enough.

But that's how I met my husband, because he was here and he, you know, showed me all the places that were below the surface of Hong Kong and the wet markets and the, the places where you go up the back stairs and all the guys are in galoshes and it's the best shrimp you've ever had in your life and, and that kind of thing. So. So that was destiny. I came to Hong Kong, met him, and. And we're still here.

And how are women treated in 1999 in Hong Kong?

I don't know. Yeah, you know, the. There's. It's an interesting question, really. Well, I would say.

Depending on. On where you are, but there's been an interesting mix of communism, socialism, democracy across the countries in Asia. And I was just in Mongolia and they have democracy now. And they were talking about how, you know, the different challenges of being a woman in different. Under different political situations or, or different governments where socialism, you know, and communism has a certain amount of equality.

But their mothers had to go back after, you know, one week of maternity because everybody was equal. So if you're a woman, then you should be right back at work, same as a man. And, and so, you know, that, that was a different view for me on what that looked like. Hong Kong, now part of China. And, and even in 99, it, it was after the handover has this interesting mix of.

Communism where everybody should get their fair share and Confucian thought, which is very hierarchical and not particularly, in my opinion.

Great for women because there is actually, you are actually placed in the hierarchy as like, you know, as.

Defer to defer to the man of the household. You know, there's different interpretations of that, but that's how I see it playing out. That said, I think that the way that women have advanced and such in Hong Kong is great.

We're still a little bit lagging in terms of women on boards and those metrics, but by and large, it's a. It's a pretty fantastic life.

Okay, so you get to Hong Kong and you start.

Are you right away working or learning.

Or what do you do? I worked in an Internet company during the Internet boom. It was great. We had Jack Ma Valibaba come to, you know, our big conferences. We did the Internet Oscars in Singapore. It was great. My boss at the time was well networked. He gave me his Palm Pilot and said, call everybody in here and, you know, invite them to our event, program the event. So that was my landing in Hong Kong. I just.

Had a great time. It was so fun. It was, it was very crazy. But. And that was about two years before the dot com bust.

Okay, so dot com busts then. Where does Diana go?

I was working for a different startup and the venture capital firm that invested in it took me on because of my network and my.

My relationships and my ability to kind of look out and find interesting on the horizon deals. So I went there for a couple of years and looked at companies, invested in companies, helped the startup founders. It was early stage investing. Yeah. And then my husband and I decided to go off and travel a bit. We both left our jobs and.

Went to Myanmar and Lao and backpacked through India. And we thought we would take a Whole year. But then it was right around 9, 11, so that kind of cut off this big plan to go down the Karakoram highway into Pakistan and other places. So we decided to do a couple months of travel and then we ended up back in New York for a bit.

Oh, wow. So in all that travel.

Did you. Was, did you feel safe? Was it. I mean, is it safe backpacking through all the different countries that you went through?

You know, at this point in time, most people look at America and think that that is the least safe place on the planet to be. So I used to walk down the street in New York City as a single woman at 2:00 clock in the morning, coming home from a dinner.

Fully alert, with my keys, you know, balled up in my fist, ready to frankly attack somebody that attacked me and, and I have been.

Robbed and, and whatever in New York City. So I, I think that that gives you a sense of survival instinct. And most of the travel I've done has been with other people and I don't feel like it's any really any less safe than other places. Even in places where, you know, we went to Nepal and they were having a coup, but we were out in the countryside and you end up being in these places where the news says X and the experience for a person is Y. Right. It really is different. Even here in Hong Kong, we had protests that was in one part of the city, but you could feel like it wasn't happening. You know, to a certain extent. The kids were still going to school. You know, the tear gas was over here. The, the neighborhood where you go to school is over here. And so that's what I found in the world. I've been in a lot of places where it maybe hasn't been the most safe, but.

It is. You just have to be aware of your surroundings. And I think it is that trusted relationships piece where you find a person, you know, the person at your hotel who tells you where to go and where not to go or invites you in to their family or whatever it is that, that to me, the people that I meet when I travel is. Makes me feel safe.

For those of you that are listening and can't see Diana, the reason I asked that question is because Diana can't necessarily blend in in Asia. Right. I mean, you can't just. You don't look Asian.

I know, keep trying, but.

You'Re not going to look Asian. And so you're going through some countries where obviously you're going to stand out. You'll probably be the Only white person there, right?

Well, you know, I went to my husband's village in China and I thought I was going to be really special. And in the old days in China, when I went to Tiananmen Square, which, you know, to sort of see the. The.

Sites, people would come up and want to take a picture with me. And now that doesn't happen. You know, there's. Everything is ubiquitous in terms of social media, in terms of television. And so I went to my husband's village and I thought, oh, people are going to think I'm really cool and kind of special.

And I went there and nobody paid me any mind. And then I walk in and I realize, you know, his uncle and, and like cousins and, and. And stuff are sitting there watching Baywatch, right? They're watching like Pamela Anderson run down the beach. And then I walk in and I'm like, oh, I get it now. I know what they're like, yeah, whatever.

Well, a little rude awakening, little hub of pirate. And okay, so now you go back, you go to New York. 9, 11 happens, you're in New York.

How long were you there?

We were just there a couple of years. What were we doing? We were there. My husband's grandmother was sick. We wanted to stay and stick around and make sure she was okay. My husband and I sort of looked. It was sort of plugging back into family.

He and I were both looking for different opportunities. He ended up getting a job. I ended up starting a company.

And we just did that for two years. And then he got another job back in Hong Kong. And so we moved back.

Got it. And then. So you. When did your book come out?

My book came out in 2019, and I had just left the Financial Times.

And did a TED Talk and was starting to.

So a lot of the folks in the board director program that I started when I worked at Financial Times were maybe average age of 50, and they wanted to be board directors, but really they just wanted to know what to do in that third quarter of life from sort of 50 to 75. And they kept asking me, diana, what should I do? What should I do with my life? And I kept thinking, oh, my God, These people are CEOs. They're like board directors. Why aren't they asking me? But it was at a time when I had been in my corporate role there for 10 years and was thinking.

Yeah, what should we do? There's got. It's got to be a better way to do this. Not that many people are very happy in their work. They're not really sure what to do once in particular, once they reach 50. Some European companies have a retirement age at 55, but we're living longer. We're living at this sort of hundred year life and we're not really prepared for it. Companies are not prepared for it. And we also are not really sure what we want to do. We want to do work that matters. You know, we're either too expensive to be in the current role or, you know, if you're a CEO, that's a tenure that lasts for a certain amount of time, you don't have a lot of control over it. So what do you do then? So that's why I wrote my book, because really there were so many people going. Work has changed and we have not changed with it. We need new skills and we're not really sure what they are. So how do we figure out how to go forward?

So tell us about it. So it's future proof, reinventing work at an age, in an age of acceleration.

What do you mean by future proof?

So what are the skills and mindsets and behaviors and awareness that can allow you to stay relevant through a longer career? So the context was companies are, company lifespans are shortening in the S and P. It's gone from 60 years to 2012 years. And people like me have kind of gone through and done the right things and gone to the right schools and tried to go into the right jobs with this idea that it would be linear, we would be safe, we would do the same thing, we would learn something and apply it as our trade for all time. And you and I know that that's not true. And so the idea, you know, even governments are looking at Social Security and saying, oh my gosh, we have all these people, they're living longer. Companies are looking at people and saying, we can't give you the path. You guys are out there at the edge. You need to tell us what's happening. And so there's this breakdown between employers and employees in terms of expectations. So the way I interviewed over a hundred people looking for patterns, trying to figure out what are the people who seem to be doing it right, doing well. And then those came into four different virtues. One is experimentation. So not just doing what you're doing and never changing, but actually always thinking about what's my next experiment, what's my next way to do something. My next assumption that I want to challenge, the second one is reinvention. So thinking about your core competencies and skills and how they can be adapted to new environments. The other One is collaboration because people are increasingly collaborating. They're collaborating virtually.

They'Re going into teams where they might be there for a couple of months and then have to go to another team. So the whole upskilling geographically, multiculturally, etc. And then the rest, the other one is focus. So being able in this, this very volatile world to figure out what you need to focus on. So those are the things that I found really interesting. Successful people were doing well.

Was one of those more.

I don't know if the word was one of the, those four. Happier. So are you saying that people in the second half or third quarter or fourth quarter, I guess third quarter of life, when they leave their jobs, you're finding they're either going to re. Experiment with something new, they're either going to reinvent themselves or either going to collaborate with some other people and do something or they're going to focus on a particular thing. Is that kind of what you're saying or do they do all four?

Well, what I was saying for the book, which, which has a broader audience, is that.

Those are things you need to do throughout your career. So regardless of whether or not you are 25 or 35, the, the third quarter people sparked, they were sort of the inspiration for the book. But the book is about.

Taking those mindsets. It's basically about taking agency over your own career, knowing yourself, being able to say, okay, this is my path. It's not just at this one company. I'm going to be always looking for the next opportunity to try something new, to apply my skills in a new way, to do that with other people. Because we're, we're facing things in the world that are very difficult to solve by ourselves. So the ability, you know, things like climate change, things like inequality, those kind of things, things like AI regulation, those are the kind of things that require collaboration. And I'm a community minded person anyway, so, so for me it's, it's important. But I really do think that that's a superpower, especially as the emerging tech, you know, now AI can do so many things. What do you have left? Well, it's really your ability to connect to people. It's your ability to, you know, have one person and another person produce something that was just wouldn't be possible alone. And that's a skill.

Teachable skill.

Oh yeah, I actually teach that at the MBA level. Interpersonal dynamics of leadership. It's 100% skill. That is not enough, in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah. So.

It says reinventing work in an age of Acceleration.

So right now we're the age of acceleration. 0 that, because it feels that way for sure.

Right?

Things are just screaming buys AI today won't look anything like AI two months from now.

Well, as a futurist, what we like to say is change is slow, if you do your homework. So things are changing and things are uncertain. And for sure the technology is extraordinary. But if you think about it, you're living a longer life. So just by virtue of that, you're going to see more change.

And then the technology shifts are happening closer together. So actually, yes, you're, you know, it's generative AI two years ago and it's going to be quantum computing will transform things and maybe 20 years.

And we have blockchain, which is yet to really sink its teeth into things. But those are things you have to think about. And, you know, if you're paying attention to social media, then you're like, okay, is it Snapchat or TikTok or whatever it is. So, yes, that is changing. But then there are some big changes also, like the demographic change, like the aging workforce and the multi generations, like the fact that China's slowing and birth rate is declining and India just surpassed it in terms of population, like some of these really seismic shifts that people could prepare for. And that's the work I do with companies is what are the big drivers? What are the scenarios that you can imagine for your business? How does, say, AI change it? And then how do we reverse engineer so that we can be prepared for all this change?

Because most people just go, okay, it's so changing so much. The next time something happens, I'll react to it. But you can really spend time coming together to think about, okay, what are our coping strategies? What are our opportunistic.

Ways of working so that we can harness all this disruption and win.

Wow. So for the listeners, what is a futurist?

How do you define that?

I think of it as somebody who practices strategic foresight. There are.

Debates within the futurist community as to who's allowed to be a futurist and who's not. Futurists use strategic foresight tools to help people in companies to navigate the future. And so they don't predict the future. They do things like scenario planning, they do.

Mapping long term. But generally the difference between them and say I did corporate strategy and corporate innovation for most of my career.

The difference is that you go further out and that you use different tools to be thinking about the possibilities. And it is also, in my experience, mapping.

The secondary effects so in that sense, strategic foresight has a long history, but sort of fell out of favor to in and strategic planning came in and it was all about the five year plan and what our company does. And now strategic foresight's coming back in because it's, it dovetails nicely with sustainability and the sense that, you know, even during COVID we realized, okay, if we don't have a healthy community, then we don't have people that are going to work, we don't have people who are buying things, etc. Etc. So it brings things together in a longer term, more holistic way.

So a lot of buzzwords in there.

How about, yeah, we find better ways that.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what most of that meant. So in sixth grade English, what is a futurist?

Somebody who helps.

Companies or people.

Find better ways to work now so that they can have a better future.

Awesome.

They create inspiring futures that matter.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it would be so much fun at least for another better way person like myself to be a futurist. I mean, I can't. You just get so excited about what's coming, it's scary. Well, let me ask you this. As a futurist, are you more excited or more fearful about the future?

I'm excited. I am excited about in particular, I focus on the future of work and I think that the ways people are coming together and organizing the level of self awareness that people can get through things like Y O S.

Is really transforming the way that we can work and contribute. So that makes me optimistic. That said, when I do work with sustainability, it makes me a little bit scared because the level of collaboration and stakeholder management and.

Private public partnerships between government and companies, that is daunting. It is really daunting.

What do you mean by sustainability?

I basically mean the way that.

We collectively are trying to mitigate changes in the environment in particular. I mean there are other, you know, things related, but that's the most urgent, acute one that is.

That to me is.

Is scary.

Yeah, it's funny, I, I met, I can't remember who it was I was talking to a bit ago and they were talking about sustainability and I asked him to define sustainability because that was kind of a, a pretty big buzz thing that they were talking about and they could not define what sustainability meant because I didn't, it was in a definition. And so I didn't ever really get a good understanding of what do we mean by sustainability. So you're talking about sustainability of planet Earth.

That's the Thing that worries me the most, I think of sustainability as how do you for instance, in your company create something that can continue like on its very basic definition. That's all we're trying to do. And.

We like it to be continue and be better. Right. So you know, we could continue in our companies.

Employing child labor. And.

Most people feel well that's not sustainable. I mean in some countries, you know, it has been. But we're, you know, when, when people work on sustainability and all its many pieces and for boards is, you know that there's a lot of regulation coming in saying environmental, social and governance is really important. So it's not sustainable because actually the regulation's changing. So you know, even in the, in the US like child labor is not allowed now. So it's no longer sustainable to run your company with a lot of kids in it. So that's all it means. I think that it is, you know, a word that's come to mean a lot of different things, but to me it just means you can keep going.

So I have a challenge for you as a better way. Another better way.

Okay, what's the challenge?

My, the challenge is, well, think about what made Dr. Oz so popular. He took complex medical stuff and made it simple for people to understand.

Mine.

Why is not simplify.

Would be to think the language of futurists and bring it to a level that people actually know what you're saying. In the space it seems like there's so much black buzzword stuffy thing, you know, stuff that every like impressive words but nobody knows what the heck they mean. Like, you know, like strategic first foresight. Who's going to know what that means? I don't know what the heck that means. So how do you, how do you actually participate if you don't even know what we're talking about? If I don't know what we're talking about. But when you ate in sixth grade English, it was sure.

Much more exciting.

Does that make sense?

Who doesn't want to navigate the future? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My speaker coach, his name is Joel Weldon and he, he always tells me, he says if you use a word that may have multiple meanings or your audience may not know what it means, you have to define it. And once I started doing that, I can't tell you the impact, the change in impact you can have when you just define what it is you're talking about. So in the space.

An example would be I was speaking at a, I was a keynote speaker at this elite Wealth Advisor symposium. It was the top 100 wealth advisors and the conference title. The theme was becoming advisor 2.0.

Okay.

Becoming advisor 2.0. And I'm the, the lead off of the kickoff keynote. And so I don't know what advisor 2.0 means. I asked the people putting on the event, like, what does advisor 2.0 mean? And I got two different answers from the two people putting it on. So I asked the audience, does everybody in here know what advisor 2.0 means? And nobody knew what it meant.

It's like, no, but we want to be one.

The whole conference was on being advisor 2.0. And they all showed up for that, but they don't even know what it means. So I went to Chad GPT and I said, okay, what does advisor 2.0 mean? So Chad GPT gave me and I said in three bullet points. So it gave me these three really complex answers. I said, do you all, do you know what that means? And they're like, no, we don't know what that means either. And I said, okay, in sixth grade English, what does advisor 2.0 mean? And so then it came up with using high tech tools, focusing on the whole picture, creating strong, meaningful relationships. And then I said, can we all agree that that's what advisor 2.0 means? And they're like, yeah, well, hey, now we're all on the same page. Now we can actually have a conversation. But if I have my own definition of strategic foresight and you have your definition and everybody in the room has their own definition or of sustainability, how are we possibly going to have a conversation?

Yep.

So that's the, that was my challenge because it's, it was what my speaker coach challenged me with is I would say something. He's like, I don't know what that means. Even the word why, Right? Even the word why. Are we talking about the why? Like, my kids are my why are we talking about my why? Like why I'm here on Earth.

So you have to define it so that we're all having the same conversation. But.

So that was, that's why when we, as we were talking, I thought, boy, if I knew what those words meant and we were on the same page with those, well, then I could, you know, participate in the thinking. But before that, it's very hard.

It's a good comment. Thank you for helping me find a better way.

What's a better way to a better way? But so what, what excites you the most about, about the future? What's like if, if a company brings you in and Says, you know, this is what you study, this is what you're all about. What would be the thing that excites you the most that you see maybe five, ten years from now, or let's just go five years from now. What would be the thing?

I feel like people can.

Love work again, that would be, you know, and that it'll fit into the context of a satisfying life.

I go into companies all the time, and one of the things that is helpful is.

We align around a vision. And so if I go into a company in five years, and I mean, I'd probably be out of work if this happens. So I don't know how excited I am about it, but let's just go there, you know, that they have a clear vision. I do believe people, you know, they still need coaching and, and whatnot, but they have a clear vision. People need help to get to that vision often, you know, that facilitation, like being able to paint the picture. So, in fact, in my keynotes, I don't ever talk about the things we just talked about. I tell stories about what is possible when DNA predicts.

Our careers. So instead of, you know, something like a Y assessment, you would. At 2 years old, your DNA reveal party would be announced and everybody would gather around and they would say, gary, you're going to be a doctor, because that's what your DNA says. It's already happening. It's already happening. Now. I already have an app on my phone with my DNA that tells me with a really low confidence rate, that I am altruistic or entrepreneurial or whatever it is. And so those interesting stories about what's possible are usually the way that I talk about the future. And in the future, I feel like if we get to know more about ourselves and we get to know what it is that motivates us, that we will be able to have better conversations at work, that we'll be able to find work that resonates with us, and that we'll spend much more time.

Frankly, you know, communicating with each other, having better conversations, working on things that are super motivating.

That are really moonshot goals.

And that to me is like a beautiful future. And it seems so simple, but it's.

Not happening, especially for the people that get the right DNA.

Well, your DNA should be able to predict. You know, it's not like we want one type, right? We would just have one type of person. We need all types. That's why there's.

But I don't want to go. I don't want the DNA that says I'm going to be the garbage man. That's not going to be the, the DNA that I'm going to want. So you're going to have people mad at their parents.

Yeah, I think that's already happening.

I think that's already happening.

So the thing is though, that, you know, this is already happening. I run a future proof course in community where we use Yoshi as a foundation. And part of that is people getting to know what's motivating to them and it's how they map their futures. They understand what their why is, they understand how it fits into the future. And we help them build a narrative and a network to make it happen. So the future is already here and.

I didn't even know you were doing that.

Well, there you go. Yeah, it's because one of your consultants is one of my community future proofers and he came and said, I've found this really interesting thing. And people said, that's great. That's a foundation, you know that, that gives us an interesting vocabulary around our purpose. And we have then built on that for our 10 week course. It's fantastic.

I love that.

It really does very quickly get you to the essence of who are you? So you can figure out what do I want to do? Where should I go? Where's my passion? Where's my purpose? What, and you're proving it over and over and over.

Yep. That is. We have hundreds of people.

I love that. I would love to. Are you keeping data on the people you're working with and how it's working out for them?

Yes, actually. So our future proofer, Watson, he's the one that does the test because I'm not licensed.

Yeah. And he does keep track. We have our, we have the whole team wise and, and how they interact. Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome. Well, Diana, if there's people that are listening that want to follow you, want to get a hold of you, want to work with you, what's the best way for them to want, want to buy your book, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

So our website is futureprooflab.com and we have something that simplifies this process to 11 questions. So I'll send you a link. And it's also at Future proof lab for 11 questions to navigate your future and you just go through and it will tell you where you can focus in order to find better ways to navigate the future. And the book is on Amazon.

I love that. And well, thank you so much for getting up early and I don't know if this pre coffee or after coffee, but I really appreciate you you being here.

And I'm sure we're going to stay in touch over the years, and I definitely want to follow your work because it's so aligned with what we're doing. So thank you so much for for being here and sharing your story.

Thank you so much. It was a great conversation. Thanks, Gary.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why Today day. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.