Transform Now or Be Left Behind in 2 Years | Former Chief Innovation Evangelist at Google
We try to predict the coming future, but the future doesn't simply wait for us. In an era filled with uncertainty, especially the rapidly transforming AI era...
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Contributed by 刘嘉琪Transcript
Intro
- 00:00The idea for your future ready mine really started when I observed many many people in this world to not being able
- 00:07to deal with that uncertainty that the future actually holds right and that created a lot of anxiety for people around the future. One of the
- 00:15experiences I had a couple of years ago really helped me to understand that we have more control of our future than we
- 00:22actually think was when the wildfires happened in California. They came clo as close as 1 mile to our house. So what we
- 00:29noticed is that police came and gave us an evacuation order, right? So we had to pack our things in less than 10 minutes and evacuate our house. Our family of
- 00:38five. What I told my kids and what I told myself is that we cannot control the fires. So our house might be gone or it might be still there when we return.
- 00:48But what we can control is how we respond to that situation. Do we respond with optimism? Do we respond with openness, with curiosity? All of that
- 00:57really helped us to then start living a life that was very different before the wildfires, a life that is more aligned
- 01:04with nature, where we grow our own food, where we respect nature even more. We were quite optimistic when we left our
- 01:11house and uh after 14 days we were able to return back and luckily the house was still there and our op optimism about
- 01:18how to live with the future was also actually increased. So what I wanted to give people is three things. First one is a framework that they can use to
- 01:27really build the future that they want to see happening. The second thing is I wanted to give them stories from individuals that build remarkable futures for themselves. And the third
- 01:36thing is really practices that everybody can use in their own lives to create the dream future they want to see
- 01:43happening. Hello, my name is Frederick Fat and I'm the first and former chief innovation evangelist at Google. I'm also the author of a book, What's Next is Now? How to live future ready.
Former Google Chief Innovation Evangelist
- 01:53Everybody is interested in their future.
- 01:56What we mostly see is that people think about the future as something abstract, right? But I believe that predictions don't really help when we think about
- 02:04the future. So I want to help people to have a clearer picture about the future by actually imagining it and not just
- 02:11imagining the future, but imagining their future. Because the future is not something that just happens to you. It's something that you make happen. And for
- 02:20most people, it's really coming down to that question. How can I create a better future for myself? And I want to give
- 02:27people the mind state to really shape the future they want to see
- 02:32[Music]
12 Years Inside Google Innovation: One Core Takeway
- 02:38happening. I've been the chief innovation evangelist at Google for about 12 and a half years. My role I was really responsible on shaping the
- 02:47culture of creativity and innovation at Google. Really trying to train people in things like curiosity and empathy and
- 02:56experimentation. Giving them the right methods and tools and also mind state to really invent a better future. And
- 03:03secondly, shaping the culture, trying to create initiatives in the culture that really brings the values to life that
- 03:12Google stands for. Values around creativity, having an ambition around the future, but also trying to think 10x
- 03:20and trying to think really bold and big about the future. That was really um part of of the work. And uh when you want to create a culture, right, what I
- 03:28really see is that most cultures in organizations have specific values.
- 03:34Values like creativity or productivity or community. What I try to do is activate those values through rituals.
- 03:43One of the rituals that I included in our culture at Google was what I call the Penguin Award because the Penguin
- 03:51Award really rewarded people for taking risks. And uh when you take risks, you're really trying to try many things
- 03:58out, right? You're thinking not just bold, but you're acting bold as well.
- 04:02Encouraging risk-taking through a ritual with the penguin award was something fascinating because for me, penguins really stand for taking risks. As you
- 04:12imagine, penguins on an ice shelf, many of them, right, a colony of penguins, there's always one penguin that's the courageous penguin that jumps first into
- 04:21the water. the rest of the colony stands back and really observes is that if that little penguin comes back up with food or became food, right, there's a 50%
- 04:29chance. And so what I wanted to signal is that when people really jump into the cold water, meaning that they're trying something new, that they're
- 04:37experimenting, that they're taking a risk, that should be rewarded with the penguin award. Because we also know that when no one jumps from that ice shelf, no one takes a risk in an organization.
- 04:48colony of penguins will disappear and so will the organization. So I think it's really important that we build cultures through rituals in uh every
- 04:57organization. I think everybody's able to do that. Yes, I think everybody can be that courageous penguin, right? That jumps first into the water in that metaphor.
How Google Creates 'First Penguins'
- 05:07Courage is something that we all have, right? But usually our mind doesn't like to take risks. I think what we can do is
- 05:14instead of waiting for the perfect moment or for perfection, just go for it. Just give it a try, right? And see
- 05:22what happens. And usually what we find is when you take that risk, when you're open to trying something new, you feel rewarded, right? That creates a very
- 05:30comforting effect as well. So what I'm practicing myself is trying to not do things twice, right? not to fall into
- 05:37that autopilot that our mind loves to go onto because that autopilot really creates or saves energy for our mind,
- 05:45right? And when as soon as we get off autopilot and we engage in something new, we take a risk or we try something new. It might be talking to a stranger
- 05:53or it might be trying out a new idea, our minds need to be activated. That energy, I think, is great because then
- 06:01we see that we're getting off autopilot and we actually we're trying something new. and then that might lead to an innovation then as
- 06:09well. During my time at Google, I've been able to work with tens of thousands of Googlers and really trying to figure out how do people not just imagine a
6 Dimensions of Future Ready Mind
- 06:18better future, how do they innovate, how do they use their creativity to really create something better. So in my first couple of weeks I actually traveled to
- 06:26really many offices connected with many many Googlers around the world to really trying to understand how do people innovate and what I found is that it's
- 06:35usually not a place that makes the difference. It's also not a specific framework and it's also not the resources they have access to. What I
- 06:43found is really in their mind state what I call a future ready mind state. And that mind state for me has five dimensions. First, it's about radical
- 06:52optimism. Thinking not just that the glass is half full, but seeing the potential to fill the glass even further. It's about unreserved openness.
- 07:00Being open to many ideas, being open to perspectives, and also being open to change your own perspective as well is
- 07:07really critical because openness is really supercharger to your personal growth. The third one is about curiosity, compulsive curiosity, asking
- 07:17those big what if questions that allow you to really think big. And then it's about experimentation, perpetual experimentation, these tiny quick
- 07:26experiments that allow you to really learning quickly, to really learn quickly as well because the path to the future is really paved with experiments.
- 07:34And then it's about empathy. Not just empathy for other people, but also empathy for your future self. trying to understand your future needs is really
- 07:42critical. And then the last dimension is dimension X. It's your personal superpower that allows you to really use
- 07:49whatever your superpower is to create these uh incredible innovations, to create something new, and to tap into your creativity as well. So these six
- 07:58dimensions for me really define what I call a future ready mind. And with a future ready mind, you can really see more opportunities. you can take control
- 08:06of your future and you can shape the future that you want to see happening. I think it's the combination of those dimensions, right? It's not
- 08:14that radical optimism is more important that openness or empathy, right? I think they're all incredibly important. And the good news is that we all have a
- 08:23certain amount of those qualities of those dimensions in ourselves. We all to a certain degree open. We all to a certain degree optimistic. We all like
- 08:32to experiment from time to time. But what I also see is that when we take for example curiosity, our curiosity when we grow up actually goes dormant. That's
- 08:41what studies actually show. So I want to bring those dimensions back into your life by actually trying to train
- 08:47yourself in curiosity, in openness, in experimentation, and in optimism. And if you train yourself in these things, I
- 08:55guarantee you're going to see more opportunities for yourself and you're going to take control of the future that you want to actually see happening. So I've been able to work with many
- 09:04organizations range from the UN to NASA to the NBA to the German Soccer Association and many many more including
- 09:13startups. And what I've seen is that let's take curiosity. Startups really use their curiosity to explore something
- 09:21new. They're the best in asking good questions and trying to really reimagine what is possible. When organizations
- 09:28grow older, right, what we see is that curiosity is usually replaced with scaling or other things that they want
- 09:36to focus on. So two things I've tried when it comes to training people innovation and creativity was first to
- 09:44help them to train specific things like empathy, expansive thinking or experimentation. And the second thing is what we tried is we built environments
- 09:53where people really could reduce that friction from having an idea to building your first prototype. And the garage
- 10:01that I founded was one of those places where a lot of Googlers came together to try out some ideas, right? To really start to push the boundaries on some of
- 10:09those ideas and really started to learn quickly how things work and what works and what doesn't work. So it's really a space around experimentation. We had um
- 10:17projects like project lon was created those stratospheric balloons to really provide uh internet around the world.
- 10:23Antennas and some of the the balloon parts were actually um prototyped in the garage and experimented with. What I found is that also Google Glass for example was launched out of the garage.
- 10:34A project where we invited people to test out this service uh a couple of years ago and prototype it and
- 10:41experiment with it. Right? So I think for me it was really critical that we take an approach to innovation that is based on experimentation and empathy and
- 10:49expansive thinking. Those three elements that really allow you to not just imagine ideas but really build ideas that are meaningful to people that are
- 10:58based on radical new ideas but also that are tried out so that we can start learning what works and what doesn't
- 11:05work. Innovation doesn't happen by itself, right? It's something where you have to train people in but also you
How to Create Innovation: The Google Way
- 11:13have to create a culture and an environment where innovation can actually happen. Those two elements are very critical, right? Trying to provide
- 11:20the right training for people so that they can literally train their mind on how to innovate around how to imagine and how to think expansively and so
- 11:28forth. And at the same time finding a culture where this is actually possible with initiatives like the penguin award that I just shared um as well that
- 11:37allows people to take more risks. So combining those two things where you train people into in uh in innovation
- 11:45and you build a culture around innovation is really critical and that was the main focus of my work. What I felt is that when it comes to the future
- 11:53for example and innovation sometimes see that our mind creates four strategies that really is not really helpful but
- 12:01it's just um a natural very human thing that evolves when we think about the future. The first thing is that we have anxiety about the future, right?
- 12:08Sometimes we think about the future as not desirable, as something that just happens to us, right? That is not in our control and that creates anxiety, right?
- 12:17The second thing is that sometimes we think we can just wait until the future happens, right? So we wait until something in our lives happens and then
- 12:27we start to act. The third thing is that sometimes we think the future is owned by others, right? So we think that our
- 12:34partners, our managers or our leaders or the government or politicians or whatever it is are owning the future and
- 12:42creating the future. And I think that's not true. And the fourth one is that sometimes we just want to deny the future, right? We want to bring back the past. We want to say like, oh, you know,
- 12:51past times have been better and and all of those arguments. So having that anxiety, waiting for the future, thinking that others own the future and
- 12:59denying the future are four things that really are not helpful, right? Because I think everybody has the opportunity to
- 13:06shape their own future and have control over their own future. I think there's there's three
Three Habits to Practice Now to Transform Your Future
- 13:14things that I want to share. First one is trying to really imagine your future and make that a practice every day.
- 13:21Maybe the first 60 seconds in the morning or the first three minutes in the morning trying to really just close your eyes for a moment and trying to
- 13:30imagine your future self. Trying to see a clearer picture of where you going to be in the future, a year from now for
- 13:37example, who you going to be surrounded by and what are you doing? And then the fourth critical element is how do you feel in that future and what do you want
- 13:45to feel in this future as well? very important practice that everybody can do every morning or throughout the day to really build that muscle of imagination,
- 13:53your future self. The second thing I recommend doing is you want to turn into a more optimistic person. There are some
- 14:00interesting studies that show that if you write down three things in the evening and that can be on your phone or it can be on a piece of paper that
- 14:09really brings up the three things that you're grateful for throughout the day that you think that went well that are the positives in your day, right? And
- 14:18that could be small things. Note down three things every day. After 21 days, your mind actually changes and looks for the more positive things in in your life
- 14:26as well. And I think that's a very easy practice that everybody can do.
- 14:32[Music]