Ep 107 - Jonathan Brill, #1 Ranked Business Futurist - Unlocking Luck: How to Future-Proof Your Career

Learn more about Michael Wenderoth, Executive Coach: www.changwenderoth.com

Luck. It’s the ingredient that no one wants to admit is a big part of our success. But what if luck wasn’t about chance? What if was more about a choice – choices we could consciously take to generate better outcomes in our work and personal lives? In this episode of 97% Effective, host Michael Wenderoth speaks with Jonathan Brill, who Forbes dubbed the #1 business futurist. Their conversation will make you rethink what it means to be lucky – and provide practical steps to generate more of it in your work, and life. Why sit and watch your future happen, when you can take a hand in architecting it?

SHOW NOTES:

• The curious way that Jonathan and Michael first met.
• How to make the probability of the impossible happening go through the roof: “Shift the dynamics, you shift what is possible.”
• How networking events differ from “Serendipity Salons.”
• The key to creating a room of friends.
• The surprising response Jonathan received from Professor Adam Grant.
• When framing a question or request, remember that people want to help – but they want to maximize the leverage of their time and effort!
• How to attend one of Jonathan’s Serendipity Salons.
• Top tips to building relationships, if you can’t attend a salon.
• Keys to navigating organizational politics: How a CEO survives while the 10 people who actually did the work did not?
• The critical high-value help you can provide to others at work.
• Fun? Treating organizational politics like a game.
• 3 things that senior leaders can do to encourage people to help each other, make unexpected connections, and manage chaos.
• Focus NOT on what’s there -- but on what’s missing – to best identify opportunity.
• LUCK = Leverage help, Unexpected connections, Control the chaos, Know what’s missing.
• Why HP made Jonathan study at Stanford.
• “The best industrial designers don’t just put shape to an object, they find a new way to solve a problem.”
• Artists and systemic intuition.
• The mindset you need to manage the top conundrums that sink businesses in disruptive times.
• It’s all obvious – except it’s not

 

BIO AND LINKS:

Named the #1 Futurist by Forbes, and “the world’s leading transformation architect,” by Harvard Business Review, Jonathan Brill is a Business Futurist, AI Keynote Speaker, Executive Chairman at the Center for Radical Change, and Author of the bestseller, Rogue Waves. His visionary, yet pragmatic approach to the future is based on years as the Global Futurist at HP where he directed long-term strategy and planning. He is the Senior Fellow at HBR’s China New Growth Institute and Board Advisor at Frost & Sullivan, one of the world’s largest market intelligence firms. Jonathan’s innovation consultancies have developed over 350 products and generated over $27B USD for clients like Samsung, Microsoft, Verizon, PepsiCo and the US government. A frequent thought leader, speaker and contributor to HBR, TED, Global Peter Drucker Forum, Singularity, and Forbes, Jonathan holds a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute, and spent years as a research consultant to the MIT Media Lab.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanbrill1/
• Website: https://jonathanbrill.com
• Jonathan’s bestseller, Rogue Waves: https://jonathanbrill.com/rogue-waves
• Our mutual friend, the amazing Dorie Clark: https://dorieclark.com
• Professor Don Moore at Cal Berkeley, interview on “Decision Leadership”: https://tinyurl.com/n6cvb2x8
• Keshav Pitani, VP of R&D at Light & Wonder, interview on overcoming your aversion to office politics: https://tinyurl.com/yhbkcyv2
• Emily Chang interviews Brian Chesky: https://tinyurl.com/nhkv5muh
• Steve Caney, inventor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevencaney/
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling https://a.co/d/66xuLfM
• How the World Really Works by Vaclav Schmil https://a.co/d/bx34N09
• Michael’s award-winning book, Get Promoted: What Your Really Missing at Work That’s Holding You Back https://tinyurl.com/453txk74