Thought Leadership for Future Thinking | Joseph Press | 485

Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Joseph Press. He's the co-founder of Make Our Future, a global consulting cooperative helping organizations transition to more sustainable practices. He's a future Futures Architect at Institute for the Future. He leverages over 25 years of global experience in innovation, design, and leadership to create better futures for all. So, he also has a book out, let's say that, Transformation in the Digital Era, which is Emerald Publishing. So, without further ado, welcome aboard, Joseph.

Happy to be here, Peter Winick.

Yeah. So, let's talk for a moment, you know, you're incredibly accomplished. As an architect, right? And now you've got the consulting piece. But what I want to understand is, you know, when I look at your CV, if you will, it makes sense. It tells the story, you know, trained this way, work this way, now working this way. Create for me in sort of in real time, what is your CV or resume as a thought leader?

Yeah, that's a— every, every question is a good question, but that's a wonderful question. And as a thought leader The way that I like to tell the narrative of my career— everybody's got different twists and turns in their careers, and I've been very fortunate to be able to create a narrative around my career, which is the title of my first book that came out, uh, a year and a half ago, Innovate and Design as Leadership, what we refer to as the acronym IDEALS. And the reason that's the narrative of my career is because I spent 10 years as a workplace architect, and that's the design piece. And I, I still teach design, teach more strategic design and designing sustainable futures. The innovation is what I did as a management consultant at Deloitte Digital, doing innovation, implementing new technologies, creating new customer experiences, bringing in design for apps and websites. And then the leadership piece, I had the opportunity to spend a few years at the Center for Creative Leadership, really learning about how innovation and design bring people together. It can mobilize people for collective action. That's the challenge of transformation.

So when you're creating and developing thought leadership, who is it for? Meaning, you know, who, who is the target market? Because one of the mistakes that lots of thought leaders make is because they're so passionate about what they do, is they answer that question with a really, really wide and broad lens when that might not be so. So when you're creating stuff, give me a sense of who do you have in mind, whether it's psychographically, demographically, et cetera, that would benefit or needs to really hear what you have to say.

I mean, my sense is that ideally my thought leadership is targeted at leaders in organizations that know that they need to contribute or even change into more sustainable business models, more sustainable practices, to have a culture that is more about belonging and engaging people in the organization and also outside. So most of my career, whether it be as an architect, a consultant or, or a futurist, which is the pivot I've made 5 years ago at the Institute for the Future. And that's why I refer to myself as a futures architect, actually architecting better futures. It's really about, again, leaders who have responsibilities for— regardless of what size, but they feel responsibility to an employee population, they feel a responsibility for a customer and even consumer base, and they feel an obligation or responsibility to the community that they are a part of or that they're working.

Sure.

Because we all know that there are a lot of challenges and what we call shocks in my new book, Office Shock, that require these leaders to think differently about the future. To prepare them to lead organizations and make the hard choices so that we and they and the communities that they're part of are able to thrive in the next 10 years. There's a lot of uncertainty out there.

So, so let, let me ask you something there. It sounds that the leaders that you're talking about have a high level of awareness, they're evolved, but this might be to some degree a generational issue or a capabilities issue, right? So it might be leaders tend to be older. We don't have a lot of 23-year-old CEOs except in Silicon Valley, right? So is it that they're aware and are trying to connect either to the employee base that might be a bit younger, the changing demands of the marketplace from a buyer standpoint, or how much of it is you filling in the gaps for that for them?

Yeah, no, I think so. Our book, Office Shock, the new one that just came out a couple of weeks ago, is targeted exactly at that audience. Now the narrative of my career is put into the book Office Shock, which is more of a business book. It's targeted at those leaders that are hopefully, hopefully during the pandemic had the opportunity to get off the wheel, had the opportunity to get back home, had the opportunity to stop traveling. Had the opportunity to have their kids walk in when they're doing an online meeting. And so the reason we called it Office Shock was because we really felt that the shock of the pandemic, stopping traveling, connecting more with family and friends, yeah, a good sense of, hey, we're in this together, that the changes in the workplace were a trigger for these leaders to say, hey, I want to be able to, as you said, reach out to the younger generation. They're the ones that are going to inherit the planet that, you know, we are going to be leaving. So we're really looking to get these leaders to think differently about what are the messages, what are the stories that they want to tell that next generation. Similarly, what are the new kinds of stories that they need to tell their consumers who are concerned about—

Sure, sure. So on Office Shock, so that's the newest book that's been released recently. Let's pretend it's a year from today and the book was a wild success. And then you and I, you know, made an appointment to talk a year to the day from now. And I said to you, hey, Joseph, what— why is it a wild success? What does success look like for you for this book? How is it measured and what did it achieve that you were dreaming of?

So I really do think it comes down to did OfficeDoc touch a nerve, a nerve, a neuron, something inside those leaders with those responsibilities to say, wow, this is an opportunity. We have an opportunity now I have an opportunity, my community has an opportunity to make some of those changes that are going to build a better future for all. So specifically in the book, we have 7 spectrums of choice, the choice we believe leaders need to be making in this context of office shock. And, and by the way, Peter Winick, office shock is not just about the pandemic. And making it right to be at home 3 days a week and at the office 2 days a week, or the opposite. The pandemic and the shocks to the workplace are just the beginning. Climate change is a shock. Quality is a shock. And we see that in the US continuing. How do we, how do we reconcile the social imbalances in a way that helps us all work together and make America a great place. We also know, look what's happening now with the spy balloon from China.

Right.

Is that going to lead to war? And I'm in Europe, so I'm based in Switzerland. We're still dealing with the energy crisis from the Russia war. We're dealing with inflation, massive changes. So all of these shocks, we're hoping have touched a nerve with leaders to say, hey, This is not the— this is not the time to go back to business as usual. This is the opportunity to make some changes.

If you're enjoying this episode of Thought Leadership Leverage, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL. And share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Well, isn't there something— well, let me back this up. So one is it seems like the shocks are happening with a higher frequency, right? So more often and they're bigger shocks. Right? So there's more— it feels like more once-in-a-lifetime things have happened in the last 5 or 10 years than in the previous 25. So some of this is also to be sort of shock ready because when I think about the pandemic, for example, imagine a scenario where it's fourth quarter of 2019, so 60 days before the pandemic, and you're scenario planning or risk management office came to you as a CEO and said, "Hey, here's what we should plan for. The entire world shuts down. There's no travel." They would probably fire that person. They'd say, "You know what? Why don't you go back to what you normally do and plan for, I don't know, a hurricane in New Orleans or a fire in Madrid or whatever." Or an earthquake in Turkey. Yeah, or an earthquake in Turkey, but don't tell me the whole world's going to shut down indefinitely and travel's going to shut down. That's That's ridiculous, right? So I think that even organizations that have done a good job of trying to manage risk and create scenario planning and all that sort of stuff, these things that are happening, these black swans, I think some of it is your organization's either ready or they're not.

Yeah, and there's just— most of them are in between. And what we did in Office Shock was try to simplify the method for being future ready for any future, and it's called future back thinking. And future back thinking is based on the discipline of strategic foresight that began back in the '70s.

Yep.

Came out of the Army— US Army War College. And what we did in the book is we call it future back thinking to make it really easy to get yourself out of what we call present forward thinking. And the methodology is what future, what next, what now? And in the book we have part 1, what future, where we describe what are those impossible futures that are now possible. Part 2, we bring a lot of examples of the kinds of experiences that are are already happening now, there's signals, but we believe are going to be what next in the couple of years as that future becomes much, much closer to the present. And then part 3, we've got a lot of suggested questions and choice to be able to answer the question, all right, so what do we do now?

Got it.

What you're touching on is, is so important because we are all hardwired for present forward thinking. That's how humanity has survived for—

Right, right, right, right.

—hundreds of millennia. Okay? You see something moving, you see something strange. Okay? Present forward, risk. I need to be afraid. I need to get ready. That's what's enabled us to survive. But we know with all of these black swans and shocks, if we keep on being in a reactive mode, we are always going to miss it. The WEF actually, right before the pandemic, published their annual risk survey. Climate change was pretty high up, but pandemic was really low. And that was just 2 months before the pandemic hit the world. Right. So, you know, I think going back to your question about how do we measure success, if we are able to, and if we are able to empower leaders to be more future-ready, to not be tied into present thinking, so that they're a little bit more willing to think outside of the cognitive box or the time box to be able to help organizations make those changes, then I think we will have achieved some success. Got it.

Got it. Good stuff. So, you know, last sort of moment or two we have together, someone is out there now, I believe, or someone's listening that is where you were 2 years ago relative to the book and all that. They're thinking about it, they're in the midst of it, whatever. What do you tell a, maybe a younger Joseph, or you minus 2 or 3 years ago, to look out for and do less of and maybe do more of?

So I'm thinking about what I usually tell my students, and I usually tell my students, don't get trapped in present forward thinking. Encourage your imagination. To be able to get you out of all of the complex, noisy now. So encourage more imagination, be able to also go back to creation and creating things. And that is even more relevant now than it was 2 years ago with generative AI. So I'm a trained architect, Peter Winick, I still sketch. Isso sim. Yeah, and it's not very good. And trust me, generative AI does a much better job. But it keeps my eyes open to reality. And I think the third recommendation is focusing on yourself as a leader, which means how do you engage others for collective action? And that, that requires a high level of awareness, personal awareness, cognitive awareness. You've got to know your biases. You've got to have a sense of humility. Yeah. And you've really got to have a high sense of empathy and a desire to connect with people who are different than you. We talk about that in our Spectrum of Belonging. You've got to be looking for people who are different. That's the only way you're going to be able to make new connections, to learn, to truly be innovative, and engage others to work together to create a better future for all. Got it.

Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time and your sharing with us your journey and your thoughts and, uh, great stuff. Thank you, Joseph.

Appreciate it. Great pleasure, Peter. Thank you.

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