FMC Fast Chat: Future-Proofing Your Organization with Rocky Ozaki

This is Jaci Clement. In this episode, we chat with Now of Work's Rocky Ozaki, the go-to guy for what your organization needs to be doing right now to build back better than before it was before the pandemic hit. Ozaki's holistic approach to work emphasizes not only skills and technology, but culture and humanity as keys to success in the new normal.

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes, hosted by Fair Media Council CEO, With Jaci Clement as CEO and Executive Director, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

Our guest today is Rocky Ozaki, CEO and founder of Now of Work, and basically the go-to guy for future-proofing your organization. So we want to talk to Rocky today really about the way the pandemic has changed work as we know it and what we can expect from the future and really what we should be doing now. And I'm going to guess he's going to tell me that what we should be doing now is probably what we should have been doing about 5 years ago. Would that be an accurate beginning for you, Rock?

I think, I think 5 years is pretty conservative.

Okay, well, thank you so much for joining us today. Let's get right to it, though. From your perspective, I guess, can you encapsulate for us how the pandemic illustrated the state of businesses today? And how we're working?

Yeah, so I thought— I like a lot of companies are using the term awakening.

Okay.

And so what happened, I think, uh, and I mean, it's human nature, right? Companies were doing well and the sense of urgency wasn't upon us for, um, outside of maybe digitalization. You know, this idea of what this— the old paradigm of work and industrial age mindset, it's kind of been on the radar for, like you said, at least 5 years, probably 10 actually. And then what the pandemic was, it just— it awoke in organizations. It forced them into a state that was going to happen anyway, But they had no choice. And I think that's the most one of the most profound impacts of this of this global pandemic.

Okay, but I guess what's happening though, from what I'm seeing at least, is people are just kind of in a panic though because they're discovering that they don't have the skills that they need to do what needs to be done.

You know what's interesting about that comment is that actually I think they do. Part of this is there's just so much there's so much happening, right? And and I think that's part of the challenge is that that the calm the clarity, the confidence that people need to survive through this is lacking. But the reality is, it's like, you know, let's use analogy. Let's get right into innovation. You know, I believe that every person is creative. It's just that organizations maybe don't have the frameworks to tease out the innovation, to democratize ideas, etc., and bring them to life. But the creativity was always there. So I'm not convinced actually that people don't have the skills. It's just that we've been operating in that old industrial age mindset, command and control, Monday to Friday, punch in, punch out. And that just doesn't work anymore.

Okay. All right. So you're also talking about, though, corporate culture as playing a big part into this, aside from technology, right?

In fact, I think company culture— it's, again, something that's been sort of beat down people's throats forever is like, culture, culture, culture wins. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I believe that to be true. And I think that any organizations that's going to thrive in the future are the ones that can bring the entire culture along this journey. And so you're right, I believe— and I I can, I can dive into any aspect of culture with you, but that's what's going to win. It's not going to be top-down preaching that we need to change. You've got to fundamentally change the mindset, the muscle memory, and the culture of your companies.

Okay. So can you give me a little bit of a walkthrough? How do you do that, say, with a company that is a legacy company, you know, old school, lots of layers of management versus a startup that has no resources, no money? You know, so, so both ends of the equation there.

Yeah, it's interesting you use that comparison because, you know, there's literally polar opposites. Why are startups winning today? It's because of that scrappiness. Is that— you remember we talked about urgency to kick it off? If they don't get customers and paying customers, they're out of business. And so they don't have the balance sheet to fall back on. And so it's a perfect analogy. And in a hyper-technological world that we're living in, they are the benchmark. So when we look at legacy organizations, uh, as It's a good term for them, by the way. I think some of the things they can do is take the playbook from startup. And so some of the terms you hear, you hear like failing fast, building MVPs, right, doing customer discovery, being more human-centric, human-centered design. I find that for enterprise, if they can get away from, again, preaching top-down, put innovation, put agility, put all these, whatever it is, it doesn't matter what the context is, put them in the hands and allow it to be created bottom-up. That's how you're going to win in these legacy organizations. Of course, it's way more complex than I make it sound. But if it's not bottom-up driven, if it's not anchored on human centricity, these legacy organizations are going to have a tough time, in my opinion.

Now, can you give me an example or two of companies that are doing it right that you would say, you know, look to these guys as a model, perhaps?

You bet. Like, so one of the ones I'm really fascinated with, because the financial institution, like all these banks, they're going to be disrupted probably. And they know this, right? Like, there's this thing called open banking, particularly playing out in Europe and Australia. And it's really like debundling services, allowing APIs. So essentially any product can come in and use the data of their customers and offer them products and services. So we know if you're in the industry, it's going to be heavily disrupted. I've been super fascinated by watching the credit union space.

Yeah.

And so they have, right? And so they're not as big as the big banks. They're very community-focused. And what we're seeing is like, oh my gosh. I was like, they're really afraid. They were afraid already of both sides. A, the banks because of their girth.

Yeah.

They were afraid of the startup and fintechs because they could move so fast and they're stuck in this middle. And so what the credit unions across North America I've seen have done is rallied together and say, let's stop and use our size as an advantage. And so they're starting to partner with fintechs, they're starting to build out more innovation within their organizations. They're getting more close to their members, like really getting to know the problems they're solving, particularly through this pandemic. It's like, wow, like what are What are you looking for now in this new world, this life now that's been challenged, all these assumptions of life as a member of our credit union? How can we help you most? And these credit unions are getting so deep into understanding the problems of their customers and now their employees. I mean, as you know, as with the reopening, now we're going back to the workplace and remote and hybrid's probably going to be a thing of the future forever.

Mm-hmm.

These credit unions I'm seeing across the country are really doubling down on, again, understanding What problems they're trying to solve for the employees and for their members and building it bottom up.

Yeah. And Rock, I sat on a board of directors of a credit union for 10 years or so. And what you described is exactly what was going on there. Not only there, but within the industry, because, you know, you, you go to the conferences where everyone shares what they're doing and then you walk away saying, oh, we're in such better shape than everybody else. You know, you want—

you want— can I, can I— sorry, sorry to interrupt. You got me really excited because now I'm going to think about like when you say the word legacy organization. So one of the industries that we've been working quite a bit with lately is the funeral and funeral home and cemetery space.

Really? Okay, this is interesting.

Right? And, and this goes to the point number one, that this change transcends all sectors, right? And so if you ever want to think about a legacy industry, that's probably one of them, right? Like, and it's so interesting because there's so Probably the original legacy industry.

Yeah.

Right. And, and people are always going to pass. And so you would think— and, and so I guess they, again, they were very complacent. And we're seeing across, particularly work in the United States, wow, they're really saying, you know what, this isn't just about digital. Of course it is, but let's reimagine, like, what is death? How do we even talk about it? Like, in this younger generation, we did a hackathon with a funeral home and cemetery industry association. And what they learned from this ideation session was that this younger generation The ones who are now planning for the, the celebration of those, of what those that are passing on, the older ones, are saying this whole idea of having black and white and somber music and that 1970 decorated funeral home are gone.

Yeah.

You know, we want music, we want apps, we want to celebrate. And like, they're really changing. And now they're starting to really pivot into this actually like party planning. I don't want to use a party plan, but the event planning mode. And that's just one example. There's probably 3 or 4 on their roadmap now where they're going to disrupt That is so interesting.

Thank you for bringing that, that example to life, because it's something you would never ever think about, but it makes perfect sense. And it is a great litmus test to say, you know, if they can change everything, certainly you can change everything. I want to ask you about employees, but first I want to call attention to the fact that I say organization and you say organization. And the reason for that is I'm in New York and you're not. So here, we say organization.

Organization.

You know, pretty much everything has opened up. There's still a little debate going on whether or not masks need to be used in schools or— and when you're outside of school, things like that. But what's happening in your part of the world?

So we're— I'm in, in Western Canada, and, uh, but before it's worth, probably 70% of our clients in the US, so I'm pretty dialed into what's happening in most jurisdictions around North America. Here we are in phase— just about to go into what's called phase 2 of reopening. And so that means we can do indoor gatherings up to 50, and we're We're having, obviously, the outdoor gatherings are there. Travel within our state, or province it's called, is now open. So we're well on our way. I think in our province, whatever it is, I should know this better, 6 or 8 million people, it's quite small. You know, we're down to under 100, I think about 150 cases a day right now.

Oh.

So, and vaccinations have ramped up. I think we're at 70% vaccinations. So we're definitely in reopen mode. And in terms of the context of going back to work, I think everyone has it on their radar for this fall.

Okay. All right. So we're a little bit ahead of you, but not, not by much. So my question about employees, I guess, at the moment is, with so much change going on, one, I am going to just kind of have a leap of faith here and correct me if my idea here is right or wrong. I'm going to guess that this is going to mean that corporations or organizations, no matter the size, need to double down and get serious about employee training, one. But then I'm also wondering, if I am an employee working at what I will call a proper job, which is not to be confused with what I do today, um, is it not my responsibility to have the mentality of almost a gig worker and say, I need to keep my skill sets, you know, top of class? That's my responsibility. And if I fall behind technology, then shame on me. I'm limiting myself. So how does that work?

So I, I think you're on to something there. One of the things around, um, this whole growth mindset that's going to win— we use this term a lot, it's called micro just-in-time lifelong learning. And so what that essentially breaks down really quickly is that we generally learn in small increments. Um, 30 minutes is sort of a max, and video still is, uh, very powerful. Just-in-time meaning it's personalized, like when I want the training. It's not— shouldn't be when my mom or my employer tells me to train. It's sort of when I want. We'd like live in a hyper-personalized world. And lifelong learning, which touches on the point you just made, is that we have to accept the reality that this world is going to continue to evolve quickly and that we have— we owe it upon ourselves to stay up to speed. So I think you're right. From an individual perspective, you need to be lifelong learners. But let's not forget, we spend the most of our time where? At work. And so— and I just read an interesting article about most people find their purpose in life through work, which is bizarre, but that's the old paradigm of work— of life we're trying to change. But that's reality today. What What that means though then is they're right also in that the employer has to take a certain onus on developing their people, not just for the viability of the organization in the long term, but for the own purpose and actualization of their people. And so when you talk about reskilling, I don't know what the timeframe is, Jaci, but I think every organization needs a plan today. And it's a plan about reskilling current, you know, whatever job you're doing now, you got to continually reskill. You're going to have to upskill. You know, with technology, and you're going to have to start thinking about redeployment as well. So reskill, upskill, and redeploy, because we will lose jobs to technology and automation. But it doesn't, doesn't mean that— sorry, we're gonna, we're going to reduce some jobs or make them redundant, but that doesn't mean you can't redeploy someone and use their value somewhere else. And this is a strategy that every organization have on the roadmap right now.

Okay, so If I understand correctly, if I can use a really old-school example, when we talk about redeployment, so if way back when we used to have big call centers, right? You used to call the 800 number and get a person, and then email came along.

Yep.

So we had to reskill people to answer emails. So it wasn't, I lost my job because I answered a phone. It was, I had to now just learn the technology involved to answering the phone in a different way.

Exactly. So let's keep playing on that, on that example. So call centers still exist, right? But we also know that bots are playing a big role now, right? And chatbot experience. So the call center is going to diminish. So what value does that team member have in a call center? She has talked to customers for years.

Yeah.

And she understands the pains they have. So redeployment to me is like, oh my gosh, maybe we do deploy her to a client success role. What about a sales role? It's like, who knows them better than the people that hears their complaints? And so redeployment deployment might be just saying, what skills did you develop and knowledge in our organization today, and how might we deploy that elsewhere?

Okay. Now though, do you see though organizations with the ability to do this kind of training in-house, or are they more and more looking toward people like you as well as others that are coming at it with different ideas, different expertise, and different experiences that can also look at the overall company and say, you know what, I see a couple holes in your strategy, Let's plug them in, you know, and, and see where you can go. So how is that working out?

Yeah, I think it's hybrid, just like the— and why is it? I mean, it's that you should have the muscle memory and the, and the competence within your organization. And what's really interesting about creating a library of resources and knowledge, Jaci, is that when you allow your team members to develop them, okay, it's going to be better content, it's going to get more traction, more relevance, and more engagement. Don't— HR teams should not be building L&D programs anymore, right? Like this idea of leveraging leveraging your ecosystem and your— who's your customer?

Yeah.

The HR and L&D customers are team members. So why aren't you talking with them about the problems to solve and having them to co-design it? So I think you need to have internal capabilities because it's going to play a huge factor in uptake, uh, and, and engagement and all that. But what's the danger of only doing it inside is that you get siloed thinking and you constantly want— that's why turnover is good for organizations because you get new blood, you get new ideas, right? And so it's impossible for any organization to be ahead of all, or at least line with all the emerging technologies and trends, that's where it's complemented by external resources. And it doesn't mean you have to pay for them, right? Whether it's YouTube or small or even inexpensive ones like Udemy, there's so many online courses and, and content out there that they should be leveraging.

Okay, so for students, you know, it's college graduation time basically. Um, so if I'm just graduating What, what are the basic skill sets I should have when I'm entering the workforce today? What would prepare me for where we're going?

Oh my God, do you know that you're the 3rd person to ask that question in the last week?

Just this morning or what?

And I'm thinking like, why don't I have a better answer for this when everyone is asking this question? Like, clearly I'm missing, missing some trend here, topic. Um, you know, I, I kind of defaulted to— it's overused maybe, but resilience is going to be really important. I think that we generations have been nurtured and raised differently. And, and, and I'm not saying good or bad because every generation blames the one before, right?

Right.

And so it— but resilience, I think, is going to be really important and being able to bounce back. And creativity, you know, I think that that's something that's underscored today is that people that come into, in this workforce with a growth mindset, who are uber open-minded, who want to unleash the creativity, uh, in themselves, I think those are some capabilities that are undervalued today but won't be in the future.

Okay. And let me ask you the flip side of that question, which is, what does the best CEO need today in terms of skills in order to lead? What does that skill set look like?

You know, it's— if it was— again, what's interesting about your questions is that we've done so much work into the space. When I talk a lot about growth mindset, we believe— and I'm not in any way a scholar in this, but I've learned through my work That it's easier to create a growth mindset at a manager level down. And the CEO, when you get to that C-suite, you're kind of— in many ways, you're actually quite biased and you're set in your ways, right?

Okay.

So, so that's just for what it's worth. I think the CEOs today, I think if, if she wanted to really build her toolbox, it's to expand into her ecosystem, right? And we push a lot for this, is like adjacencies and startups and research and post-secondary. Give yourself and your executive team the gift of getting outside your own 4 walls. Because the minute you start— so I'm not sure, I think you and I were joking at a previous call around, I mean, not joking, but talking about NFTs, these non-fungible tokens in the blockchain, right? And so there's so many people maybe are talking, but they don't know what it is.

Right.

We work with one CEO and we said, here's all you're going to do is go out into your ecosystem because there's actually some startups playing in this space today. And she spent one day with, not even a day, hours with this startup. And now she fully understood the use case, not just for NFTs, but blockchain in general. And so in the course of a couple hours, just by getting outside her own doors into the startup ecosystem, she accelerated her vision for what the future was coming by a year, probably.

Okay.

So, I mean, there's so many things that a CEO can do, but I think one of the biggest opportunities is to get into the heads of the startup in your ecosystem because they're the ones trying to disrupt you in the first place. So you may as well make them an ally, not an enemy.

Good advice. Yeah, definitely. So how much of what is happening right now would you say is almost on fast-track mode? You know, we hear a lot about disruption, and we know in particular artificial intelligence and that kind of technology has really just, you know, developed quickly over the course of the pandemic. I guess because we had no social lives, everyone just sat there and developed things, right? Um, so how much is that impacting what we're talking about doing right now versus what we should be doing tomorrow?

I think that it's, um, Okay. So what's accelerating? There's 2 things. Well, there's many things, but the 2 ones that I get, I watch the most. Number one is the paradigm of work being dead. So this whole hybrid work is just one small component of the modern workplace that was already co-designed a decade ago in technology companies. And so they had the playbook, they tested and failed with things like 4-day work weeks and unlimited vacations and hybrid work. They've been doing this for a decade. That for sure is being accelerated in almost every industry, at least the ones that have office office-type employees. And the other one, as you touched on, is emerging technologies. Like, because— so you're right, AI is big, and because everyone's data-centric, automation is big because we got fearful of supply chain, etc., when people get sick. And then you start to think about, okay, so retail and brick and mortar was on its way out. How are people going to shop? It's not just an online experience. You're going to see virtual reality and augmented reality infiltrate retail like never before. And again, it was fueled because of this pandemic. Things like maybe quantum Computing is a little bit far away, but 3D printing is not. And so when you look at any of the emerging technology, Jaci, I think they've been accelerated. I don't know what the number is, 5x, 10x, because number one, investors are doubling down on what the future holds. Number two is organizations trying to future-proof themselves from the next black swan event.

Mm-hmm.

And if we don't change the way we approach work, if we're not embracing technology, then you're probably going to be in trouble when it happens next.

Yeah. Okay. Tell me a little bit about the most— probably the, the most hard-to-understand, um, generation of workers if you're anything except that generation, which would be millennials. Because for a long time, you know, organizations tried to appeal particularly to millennials with what you just brought up, which was the unlimited time, time off because we need people in their age group to, to do that kind of work. Or, you know, the perks of having the pool tables and the foosball at work and the You know, unlimited game time, stuff like that. We don't hear about that so much anymore. So what is happening in with that sector of the work environment?

Uh, you mean the sort of the startup scale-up tech space?

Yeah.

I, I don't think a lot of that hasn't gone away. They're just table stakes now. And maybe it sounded gimmicky, but I mean, really quickly, there are a lot of stories and folklore out of Silicon Valley, like the ping pong table, for example. I can't claim this to be true because I wasn't there at the time, but the thinking was is that when you were a scrappy startup that, and you're working in silos and you want to get to know your team, you're playing ping pong where you had a shared interest and you got to know each other over the ping pong table. And as you got to know each other personally, then what did the, what did the conversation move to? Work. Which, which started to foster cross-functional collaboration and empathy for different people and solving problems. So I think a lot of the world, when they started to see beer taps and ping pong tables, thought they were gimmicky. But every one of them has a story behind them. And so now, just that the story was lost somewhere in translation. And there was a time when corporations were poo-pooing everything that millennials did and startups did. And now they're realizing they were actually probably right. And so a lot of those things you discussed are just table stakes now. What we're seeing happen more and more, number one, is that this idea of generations is dead. Is that actually, like, we're fundamentally all the same things. Like, let's just talk to any baby boomer today or any honest Because you're a late baby boomer.

Okay.

You're trying to tell me that if you could have worked from home and walked your daughter to school or worked in flow at home, if you could and didn't have a commute of many hours, you don't— you wouldn't do that? You're trying to tell me that if you wanted, back then, you had a creative idea that you wanted to float up to the executives, you wouldn't have wanted that opportunity? You're trying to tell me, and I'll stop with this one because I could go on for years with this. Yeah. Keep going.

Right?

You didn't want your employer to care about your wellness? And I'm not talking your physical wellness and your safety at work, but even like through a pandemic, the financial, your relationships, and broadly wellness. Well, I think the answer is we all probably did. And so, what we're seeing, and there's numerous trends, Jaci, out there, but for whatever reason, it's probably pandemic-focused, is wellbeing or wellness is rising very quickly to the top of how to engage and retain top talent. Okay.

And I, I think one of the things you brought up too, though, if you compare, say, the older generation baby boomers with, you know, millennials, Gen Z, wherever we are, um, on the, uh, younger end of the scale now, is, you know, with the baby boomers, when you went to work, you went to work, and that's what it was. Now it seems much more like, no, this is our life we're talking about.

Yeah.

And that's tricky, right? Because work-life integration is hard. And it's incumbent upon organizations to make sure that they draw a line. No emails on weekends. Like, actually, that should be a thing, right? And an agile work environment and one in which it's about what you get done, not where or when you get done. And it's not about overworking. So all those matter for sure. You're right. Work-life integration. No one can— you can't separate the two. And so let's make sure they're in— it's not about balance. It's about integrating the two. But can I just storytell for real quickly one other thing?

Yes, absolutely.

Jaci, I get so excited about this generational thing.

I hadn't guessed, Rock.

But here's a hilarious one, right? Like one of my co-founders says to me always, Rock, you know, people hate 2 things in life, change and things staying the same. Right? And so, when I think about these generations, like it was probably 5 or 7 years ago that the baby boomer was hard on the young people saying, you're spending all your time on your phone, on this thing called Facebook and all these apps and blah, blah, blah.

Right.

Well, who are the biggest adopters today?

Right.

Because they finally saw the value proposition of being in touch with old friends from high school or university and college, that they could see pictures of their grandchildren. Now, Uber, Airbnb, sure, you poo-pooed them a decade ago because it was a young person thing, but now you've realized. And so sometimes it just takes some time for generations to see, number one, because we're hard to deal with. It's hard to deal with change. But you— the young people are designing this future as they always have. And these older generations need to embrace this, in my view. It doesn't mean you need to fully embrace, but you will see that there's value propositions in almost every technology, no matter what age you are. And it comes down to solving problems at a human level, which transcends, again, all generations. It's just a matter of how much do you embrace those changes and how much are you willing to adopt them and have that growth mindset? And again, that's where CEOs or older people, it's hard to create that growth mindset as it is, in younger people, at least in my experiences.

Okay. Now, and that is actually a great spot for us to have to wrap up. I don't know if you heard my dog barking in the background. I, I think he was agreeing with what you were saying.

Oh, I hope so.

But one last question, which is our typical ending to our Fast Chat discussions, which is, what is the best part about being Rocky Ozaki today?

Oh gosh, the best— it's It is, like many people, I've challenged my assumptions of work and life. And the best thing today is 9 months, 10 months ago, we moved out of the city into a rural community in the mountains called Lake Country. And I spend 5 times more time, I work much less, spend more time with my daughter and my wife and being outdoors and doing the things that life is about while being responsible to pay bills and work and do what I love.

Yeah.

But then I used to be that 60-plus-hour-a-week work guy, and those days are long behind me. It's about relationships and my family and our health and, and things like that. And I'm living what we all want. And I know I'm blessed.

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