Frederik is a renowned global thought leader and former Chief Innovation Evangelist at Google, where he led the growth of the company's innovation culture and mentored a diverse global community of over 600 Innovation Evangelists. He is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University's d.school and teaches graduate classes on navigating ambiguity at the intersection of innovation, creativity, and design.
In our conversation Frederik and I talk about developing a future mindstate, why the future belongs to all of us and not just a few “innovators”, and his upcoming book on the topic.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
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(00:23):
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You're in great company, I'm your host, Pascal finet
co-founder of be radical. Hey everybody.
Pascal here. We are back with another episode
of disrupt disruption at. This is a reboot and I couldn't
(00:46):
be happier to have someone very special with us.
A dear friend of mine, dr. Frederick furth to introduce
Frederick, he was Google's firstand former Chief Innovation
evangelist which is where we met.
And is the adjunct professor at Stanford University's d.school,
very briefly about his incredible achievement at
(01:07):
Google. He founded the Google garage
which is their Innovation space.I actually spent quite a bit of
time in the garage, he created Google's first Innovation
laboratory CSI, lab launched Google's future Leadership
Institute that a Google school for leaders has mentored and let
a diverse Global community of 600-plus innovation evangelists
(01:28):
and Frederick. First of all, I'm super happy.
To have you but secondly you left Google how our Earth are
you leaving this incredible company?
Hello my friend, Pascal. So great to spend time with you,
it's always an honor to speak with you as I respect you as a,
as a human being as a friend, asan inspiration.
And I'm super glad that we can talk.
(01:49):
And yet, let's Dive Right In. I think it's actually good
timing because it's exactly one year ago, June.
First, I left Google. I decided that there's bigger
things waiting for me which sounds somehow strange, but I
felt that innovation. Training tens of thousands of
googlers in an innovation mindset and so forth.
(02:11):
Was an incredible opportunity. Was just the one of the best
things I could ever dreamed of to do.
But at the same time, I felt Innovation is for a few, but the
future is for everyone, which means that I was more Curious.
Now to explore how I can help people around the world.
Develop what I call a future ready, mind state to help them
(02:33):
really not just prepare for the future.
But actually shape their own future.
And so I decided that and I shared with a couple of friends
at Google and asked around, likewhat do you think?
If I if I pursue that and everybody was super excited, I
heard about this opportunity andso forth.
And a day later, I signed also abook deal which was an
(02:55):
incredible opportunity now to actually help.
I hope a lot of people around the world to live a future-ready
life. It just feels incredible to be
on that learning curve. Again, and explore new things as
well. So you said a whole bunch of
things I want to unpack. Those you have been described
not just by me but many other people as a future Optimist
(03:16):
which I absolutely adore as a title.
I would put myself into the samecamp without that label.
You also said, just something. I want a dick and double click a
little bit. On the you said, Innovation is
for the few of the future is foreveryone.
And in the end, there's a littlebit of inside baseball.
We had a call yesterday to talk a little bit, or do you want to
talk about today? And in that call, you mentioned
(03:37):
this already and it Triggered for me.
This interesting quote, there's a quote from Charles E Kettering
who said I'm interested in the future because I expect to spend
the rest of my life in the future, which I really like say
a little bit more, it's someone who has worked in Innovation.
I mean, that was the up, your life for whatever good 13 years
or 12 years at Google, it is your life to certain extent,
(04:00):
clearly in your work at StanfordUniversity.
And now, and we should make surethat people know this, you
advising some of the largest companies in the world, Hold on
this mind state of being future-ready say a little bit
more of what do you mean? The future is for everybody but
Innovation is only for the for afew for a couple of you Pascal.
(04:21):
The interesting thing is that when we look into the future,
some people are excited about itand I count both of us into that
category. We can't wait to live in the
future. I read kind of like you
predictions and kind of like howyou view technology being a big
driver of Ovation and so forth. But I also speak a lot of with
(04:42):
humans around the world around, how they feel very excited about
the future and can't wait to live in a future because they
all feel the future is going to be a better one.
It's but there's also another group of people that are anxious
about the future, they Fear the Future literally, they tell me
they want to live in the past, right?
They want to either kind of likestay where they are or bring the
(05:06):
the times back from the past andFor me, that's not an option
because I believe that everything will be better in the
future because it's in our hands.
We are what I feel in control ofshaping our own future
technology brings us into the future.
But our mind state, right? Our way of how we view the world
(05:28):
decides, how this future will look like.
And so I am tremendously excitedjust to help people.
To also feel very excited about the future because Because we
have an opportunity to do thingsbetter simply put, and you can
look at everything around the world that can be imagined.
Not just imagined better, but actually can be done better as
(05:51):
well. And so that's really what I want
to focus on and you mentioned interesting quotes and I think
there's another quote that we both kind of like share a lot,
which is the future cannot be predicted, but the future can be
invented. And I think a lot of times when
talking to Two people in large organizations, in startups
(06:11):
governments, and so forth. Most people focus on the
prediction part. Interestingly, people want to
know, hey, how does tomorrow look like?
How does the next year? Look like?
How does the next 10 years? Look like Frederick, tell us or
Pascal. Tell us and I'm sure you say the
same. We don't have the answer.
Nobody has the answer because you just can't predict how the
(06:33):
next moment will turn out. Yeah.
And I think that's okay because we should focus actually on the
second. Art of that quote, which is
Futures can be invented and everybody can invent their own
future because you have a choiceand many choices usually, and
how you make your next move? How you decide your next step?
(06:54):
How you write that next email tosomeone?
We haven't talked to her how youengage in your relationship, how
you conduct your work and so forth.
So, we all have these choices and I think I want to help
people too, to realize these choices, As they have but also
make better choices eventually in that vein, I'm curious.
And let's do this as a quick sidebar.
(07:16):
Everybody, I know talks about chechi ptai large language
models and their impact on the world and the reactions very
much as you described. They range from being very
excited about it too, like sheerTerror, I'm curious and we don't
need to talk all that much aboutAI but I'm really curious.
What was your reaction about sixmonths ago when chechi Beauty
(07:37):
hit the scene at? What was your feeling?
Yes. Like most of these tremendous
changes. Everyone is in the first couple
of seconds experiencing kind of like a shock state, right?
You like when the pandemic hit Mars 2020 or wildfires here
burning in Santa Cruz mountains,like a mile away from our house
(07:59):
or flooding just recently happened as well.
The rain just didn't stop or chechi PT appeared in November
of last year. All of those things are changes
and we humans usually approach this with a sense of curiosity,
but also fear sometimes literally kind of like we are,
(08:21):
we sometimes just stifled to be honest, but I over the of the
many years try to train myself to shorten that time, where
something happens, a change occurs, and how I respond to it.
And so you can actually Train that which is which is amazing.
Right. We are our brains are like these
(08:43):
these magical tools that we can train like our bodies.
And so, for me, whenever A change is happening, I'm trying
to immediately look for the opportunity and in chat, she
Beauty, you don't have to look very much or very long, right?
I was super excited to see what's happening there and I
remember a couple of months before they launch.
(09:04):
I was with you, actually in a magazine with, with Sam.
Founder of open Ai and so we knew kind of like what's on his
mind and what he's thinking about the future and so forth.
So I was somehow expecting that something magical will appear in
the world. At the same time, I saw
tremendous opportunities for everyone.
The first thing I did was actually sharing with my mother,
(09:27):
my mom is a very curious open-minded person.
And so it was a fascinating conversation.
We had about the opportunities, but also about what potential We
can happen in the world because that technology for me is
something where it's more than the iPhone moment.
Which me a lot of people say, right?
(09:48):
Because not everyone could afford an iPhone right now.
We have a moment where everyone has access to a very powerful
tool that allows you to do amazing, amazing things and it's
an even more powerful moment. So it's something related to
like discovering fire and somebody is now running around
the torch coming out of a cave. Of and people like, you know,
(10:10):
burning their hands. But all that's also at the same
time, seeing lots of opportunities.
What can be done with it? So, it was again, like, all of
these changes a moment where I just look for the opportunity
immediately and I'm curious. What we as Humanity can do with
it. You said something just now
which really makes me incrediblycurious and I'm pretty sure
every listener to this podcast will ask themselves the same
(10:32):
question you said you can train this and of course you're
writing a book about this. You're writing a book about
future Readiness and the mind. Wait, how do I train this?
How do I become like you? Yeah, it's not so much becoming
Frederick, it's for me. Five Dimensions, I explore in
the book which really over the past years have become clearly
(10:54):
the most vital pieces of be being future ready?
And those five are things you can cultivate, you can train,
right? First thing is optimism, which I
just shared second. One is openness.
The third dimension of that future mindset is curiosity, and
we have experimentation and empathy.
(11:16):
So these five for me kind of like clearly Define a future
Eddie mind State. And I mean that when you try to
really cultivate these five Dimensions, literally, how you
view the world, I see that you have a chance to actually shape
a better future moving forward. Better future for yourself.
(11:39):
Self and a better future for everyone.
And I think that's very powerfulbecause there's two things that
are interesting. The first thing is, everyone has
these already built in. So we have a sense of optimism,
some more, some less, but we generally as a species of human
beings we are optimistic sometimes.
(11:59):
Openness curiosity. Actually we are born as very
curious people. A sense of experimentation
trying things out. And during the pandemic we saw a
peacock Of everyone experimenting with their work
with our relationships with everything, how we shopped and
so forth, how we educate students and so forth and
empathy. We all have a sense of empathy,
(12:20):
but what I want to do is I want to elevate all of these
Dimensions. So that you truly whenever
something happens, any situationthat you can tap into these two,
then see a better future for yourself and create a better
future for For yourself to move forward.
(12:41):
I think that's something very powerful.
You ask that question how we cantrain that.
So now, the book is a very practical guide that allows you
to do these exercises that help you to train your mind in being
future ready. So you don't have to go in like
a 10 day Meditation Retreat. As meditating 10 hours a day
which I did or you don't have todo cold plunging every morning
(13:03):
after you get up these these canbe done, they can be helpful and
we have the the science and Research behind those things.
But there's easier ways we can train ourselves in these
dimensions of a future mind State.
And I want to give everyone access to that.
If you can give us a sneak peek of any one of those five
Dimensions, someone was listening to this right now and
(13:24):
saying man I'm burning, I want to try this out.
What would be a practice? What would be a tool?
They cannot deploy tomorrow to become more Future, Ready?
Absolutely, yes. So let's maybe use a metaphor.
A metaphor for me is maybe your inbox we all have email.
Inboxes some of us live in it unfortunately, right?
(13:46):
But in the inbox you receive different emails every day, it
might be things that occur as changes in your personal
relationships. It could be changes in your
professional circumstances, likegetting a promotion being laid
off and to be honest and so forth Health changes, you get an
Notification from your doctor orsomething happened in your in
(14:07):
your family, financial changes, geographical changes lifestyle
changes, you name it. All these things appear in your
inbox and now what when you apply these five dimensions of a
future ready, mind stain you canalready see if you're using.
For example open. You're open to exploring all of
these emails and just trying to see what is what is in that
(14:30):
email? What's the situation that is
described? A changes in your professional
circumstance, you being laid offoptimism, then can be applied
while you say log, okay? I got laid off, which happened
to, you know, 12, thousands of my colleagues just recently and
speaking to some of them they already saw the opportunity
(14:52):
immediately because they said Frederick to be honest.
After a couple of days I think this is the greatest opportunity
in my life because now I can focus on something that is truly
important. And Meaningful for me.
So they practiced looking for the opportunity in that email in
your inbox. That was basically saying that
(15:13):
you don't have a job anymore. And so I believe it's the only
way forward because you can't change the situation.
We all know these emails that arrived at have changes in your
personal relationship, Health changes Financial changes in all
of those changes, they can't be changed.
They are these situations. But what we can control is our
(15:34):
response. And so probably the first thing
you can practice yourself is becoming aware.
How do I respond to these things?
A my like angry and kind of likeright back immediately.
Am I stepping back? Maybe go for a quick walk.
What's my response to these and becoming aware of that?
I think is the first great exercise.
You can do because then becomingaware helps you to also be maybe
(15:58):
more thoughtful about how we respond and maybe look for the
opportunity in these changes. Curious to hear.
How do you, how do you overcome this?
Like the little devil on your shoulder?
I see a lot of people when we talk about optimism and
openness, they exhibit is on thesurface level and then they very
(16:20):
quickly fall into this. Yeah.
But the world is terrible and climate change and just look
what's happening in in Russia and the Ukraine.
How do you overcome the this this niggling voice in your
head? I'm I'm not arguing that.
These changes are not happening,right?
I think we have to be, we have to recognize that there are
(16:40):
terrible things that are happening all the time.
They're happening to us as individuals.
They're happening to us being inour professional roles, they're
happening to us in our relationships, they're happening
around the world, bad things happen.
And I think we need to recognizethat.
But how do you move forward? Are you kind of like,
complaining a lot, right? And we now we both know like
(17:05):
lots of people who are just can't stop complaining, right?
It's just, it's just a series ofcomplaints about anything
finding the reasons like why this happened and complaining
that it happened and so forth. For me, that's not a valid
strategy. The best strategy for me is
recognizing that a problem appeared and a change appeared
and then finding the opportunityto Only move forward and create
(17:30):
something valuable out of that because otherwise, you literally
lock yourself in your room, you pull the pillow over your head
or the blanket and you are stuckand I want to help people to get
unstuck. I want them to throw away the
pillow, get the blanket off you,and move into action mode.
Like what can I do now? Where's the opportunity for
(17:52):
Innovation, where's the opportunity for change?
Because I believe that's the only way we can actually really
solve these big problems that are right in front of us.
If you don't mind me sharing an anecdote of an experience.
We both had. So, we were both invited to a
lunge with the former German Minister of Economics admire and
(18:14):
it was this beautiful lunch in Silicon Valley.
Ironically, he came to Silicon Valley to see self-driving cars,
which I already thought was kindof a weird thing to do.
Coming from Germany, the countrywhere cars are truly elevated,
to a whole different level, but fair enough, whatever.
And You have this like around the table conversation and you
(18:35):
made this really funny comment, you said you made this comment.
You said, like, all right, so two plus two is five and then I
admire immediately jumped up andsaid this is wrong Frederick and
tell us a little bit about, likeI thought it was.
First of all, I thought was a really funny thing, but you did
this, of course on purpose, thattwo plus, two is not five.
But so why did you do this? And what was the, what was your
(18:57):
reaction to his reaction? Yeah, I remember.
Member that situation, it was inPalo Alto and we sat around this
big large table with lots of Brilliant Minds, coming from all
different parts of of Silicon Valley, also journalists, some
other politicians there as well.And I usually like to show
(19:18):
people how they think by giving them an experience.
And so for me, it was very important but as always, it was
risky because I didn't know the reactions, obviously, because we
haven't practiced that. And so what I did is I invited
Everyone in the room. And we were about 40 45, people
sitting in this room out, invited everyone to close their
eyes and we can do that right now, right?
(19:40):
Just closing your eyes for a moment.
And then I started it. Two plus three equals 5/4 plus 3
equals 75 plus 4 equals 10 and then immediately mr.
Altmire was. Oh there's there's a mistake as
(20:03):
I like wait a second. I have one more and then I said,
two plus two equals four and so I gave four equations and on
purpose one. One was wrong, right?
And it was just fascinating because he was the first person
to yell out loud. There's a mistake right for you
made a mistake, right? It isn't exactly.
(20:25):
That's the way we think that's ingrained in our way of thinking
is that we have that negativity bias, right?
That's the description of it. And it's based on our Evolution,
since the dawn of humankind, we were trained in a way to think
that way we work. Around in the desert.
And in the bushes, we had to look for the mistakes in our
(20:47):
environment because that literally helped us to survive.
You had to recognize the danger first because if you had that
advantage and had that negativity bias, you were
actually protecting yourself andyou protect the whole Community
by telling them. Hey, there is a dangerous tiger
out there or this Berry could bepoisonous or something like
(21:08):
that. So you had to spot the mistakes.
And it's still ingrained in our way of thinking, which is
fascinating, because I think, nowadays, we need to change.
We need to change our way of thinking, because recognizing
that there were three equations that were correct, so it's 75%,
right. There's more right than wrong,
(21:29):
was not, what was shared. Nobody said, Lee Frederick.
Great job. You did more right than wrong.
It's just, it's just fascinatingwhen you translate that into the
Innovation space and we About new ideas, you mentioned chat
CPT right or you mentioned. Self-driving cars or stuff like
that. Everybody's looking for the
(21:49):
mistakes first, everybody's looking for the flaws, spotting
things that potentially could gowrong or already went wrong.
That's not helping us to make progress.
It's good that we spot these things, but only focusing on
these instead. Now, we have to stop, can't get
it done or can't get it changes.Not helping.
That's, we have to build on the opportunity that there's a
(22:10):
couple of things that I Working out, so let's continue.
Let's try to make these even better and I think it's always
the, the, a Sayers kind of like the people who said, hey great,
there's something working out. Clearly, let's make progress,
let's move forward and it's not kind of like the people who only
focus on the, on the mistakes. First that actually, help us
(22:31):
make progress. And so it's, it was a
fascinating experience and I still remember that.
It perfectly worked out to demonstrate, how the negativity
bias is, is he enduring us to explore the opportunities in
every new innovation. It also landed you a very good
headliner. Remember this in a German
Business Journal as they were journalists with us at this day,
(22:52):
I want to zoom out from here a little bit because what you just
described makes me think about education, you've got three
children of your own you teach at Stanford University, clearly,
one of the best education institutions in the world.
You also together with your wiferun, a nonprofit organization to
have to lie, which brings Our space has two kids and schools.
(23:13):
I'm curious to hear from you as you thinking about future
Readiness. Clearly, we need to get future
Readiness to our children. How do you think about this?
What do we need to teach children?
How is it probably different to what we as adults need to
unlearn I guess and relearn say a little bit about how you
seeing like what do we do with our children?
(23:34):
Such a such a great question andit's a question that is truly as
you mention on my mind, a lot, right?
How can we reimagine education? It has been on my mind for quite
some time because my PhD was actually in that field where I
try to develop and design a new approach to education.
(23:55):
Recognizing that technology is apowerful tool that we actually
should use more in education. And so it was way a back in the
times when the first podcast came out when Web 2.0 was hip
web blogs and Wiki's and all of those things were tools that
were just got just emerging. And for me I saw a tremendous
(24:18):
opportunity to include those tools in education in schools
universities and so forth. Fascinating at that time.
Nobody was interested. Everybody told me, hey, our
education is working, right? We still don't need technology.
We still have a teacher in the Teaching students their
knowledge and they need to recite it in that test, which
(24:40):
was the education system back then, and still is in most of
the places in around the world till the pandemic.
It, and for me, again, realizingthat this is the best
opportunity now to reimagine education, because everybody's
forced now, starting from teachers, parents students, to
(25:02):
really rethink what Ian actuallyis and how we can teach our
children. And for us, we started a small
experiment here. We actually build our own School
House called the, a school and aframe building simply put
together because we wanted to give our kids, their own school,
and their own space, because we as adults have a hard time to
(25:24):
work out of our bed or bedrooms,right?
Or our kitchen tables, right? And it's the same for children
as well. So we wanted to give them their
own space, and so I actually designed and help.
This is a school where our kids every morning walked up a couple
of steps took their their schoollunch with the him and got
online education, right? So our middle one, Joshua was
(25:45):
learning how to to read and write purely online, totally
works, right? It's possible.
I think because we also have ourthree kids are at a public
school. And we were lucky, because we
had really, really good teachers.
And they immediately saw the opportunity as well went on
Google classroom and other two. Tools and technologies that were
available and immediately built a new curriculum and had some
(26:09):
interesting experiments. They were doing.
For example, they used zoom and one of the things they did is
they basically put the kids intotheir individual.
Breakout rooms, gave them a taskto read something or write
something and they didn't tell them when they will appear.
So the kids were not leaving obviously because they always
(26:29):
felt like, oh, the teacher mightshow up in the next minute or so
which was fascinating. The students were sitting in
front of a computer in their ownbreakout room doing reading and
writing in all these exercises, which was really fascinating.
So that's just one of the stories of how I think there was
an opportunity to reimagine education.
Unfortunately. We miss the opportunity at a
(26:53):
larger scale. I think there were Pockets
around the world that really stayed with using technology in
a very effective way in education, but I think we could
have done more. And so now I'm trying to really
also with this book, to influence a future curriculum
because I feel if you can teach optimism, openness curiosity,
(27:18):
experimentation and empathy to Children very early on and make
that part of the curriculum. I think you have a tremendous
opportunity, not just to make these kids future ready.
But to give them, these mindsetsthat are really important
nowadays because as we see that writing reading math, kind of
(27:39):
like all of these subjects are being challenged with technology
and so I think we have to see that as an opportunity to now
reimagine. How a curriculum could look like
for our children. And maybe have a class on
creativity and Innovation, that might be perfectly suited for,
for the Next Generation to really help us to solve these
(28:00):
big problems that are ahead of us.
I love that Frederick. This is an incredible
conversation. I really like the the breadth of
it and really getting into the Mind state of being future-ready
kind of wrapping this. I'd be curious to hear from you,
for our listeners. What would you recommend as a
daily practice? For someone who says, I want to,
I want to be come a future Optimist.
(28:21):
I or I want to become a better future Optimist.
I want to become future-ready. I want to change my mind state
to become future ready. So, what would you do as like,
I'm a big fan of Habitual changelike, flossing, your teeth is a
habit. Nobody likes to do it.
What do you think? Is a daily practice?
What do you recommend people to do?
It's a great question. So there's many things,
(28:42):
obviously, you can do. And I'm a, I'm a person who
loves to experiment with myself,as well, trying to so many
different things. As I mentioned, maybe more
extreme things like the 10-day silent Retreat. 10 hours of
meditation. Each day dipping into three
degree, cold water, every morning for 4 minutes, and 40
(29:03):
seconds, and many other things. I have my daily meditation
practice, as well, which helps me to just Become aware around
that question. Are you the master of your mind
or is the Mind mastering you? Which, for me is just
fascinating because most of the time, it's the Mind mastering
(29:24):
you, where we have a hard time even for one minute to focus our
attention on our breath, which is just fascinating the simplest
thing in the world. Just breathing through your
nose, and breathing out through your nose or to your mouth.
Yeah. It's very hard.
For us to pay attention to. And so one of the things that I
(29:46):
might just invite people to do is start with maybe a meditation
practice. That is just a minute long.
It's not 10 hours each day but just that one minute that allows
you to become aware of your thought, you know, your
feelings, how busy the mind is or not?
What's your emotional state and so forth?
(30:07):
Because for me a mind state is really The individuals inner
attitude that shape their perceptions and guide their
responses to situations interactions and daily
activities. So if you can become a more
aware of how you respond to situations and coming back to
the analogy of or metaphor of your inbox, where, like, all of
(30:29):
these new situations are waitingfor you.
How do you respond to these? And I think, as soon as you
realize that between these triggers that we all Sieve
because things are changing all the time and your response.
There's a little time or end. We have control of that time and
how we respond to these things. And I think if you can become a
(30:52):
little bit more aware, I think you're doing already the best
work towards a future ready, mind State, because it is
essentially the mental and emotional framework through
which a person views and navigates the world.
Yeah. So it's simply put how you view
yourself and the world and I think We can do a better job in
in that so that we truly can shape that future that we want
(31:17):
to see happening. Let me lean into my curiosity
and we will share in a minute. I will ask you to share a little
bit, how people can find. You will talk a little bit more
about the book, but let me very briefly lenient one curiosity.
So we're Instagram bodies. You've got a wonderful Instagram
with lots and lots of really interesting content.
And I see people holding up on amany fake pictures.
When you are in a larger crowd. Speaking on a stage, I see,
(31:40):
People holding up. What looks like a Post-It note
with a hole in it. The size of a coin.
What is that? Yes, that's a lot of the
exercises and prototyping. Currently as you can see behind
me I have a couple of prototypesjust here of these exercises
that help you train your mind tobe future ready.
(32:03):
And one of the exercises is around radical optimism.
And what I do is I give everyonein the audience.
You could be an Audience of 50 students such as recently at
Stanford, or like, we had over. 1,500 people in another
audience, just recently in Germany, and I give everyone a
Post-It note and I invite them to use that Post-It note, in a
(32:23):
way, they probably have never used it, because I asked him to
rip a hole in it. And the first thing I mentioned
is that now you have your perspective, your frame on the
world, Looking through this Frame is something that
everybody does all the time. But what's interesting is,
(32:45):
everyone has a different frame. Every hole looks very different,
right? Could be a smaller one.
It could be like, rectangular one Circle one and so forth.
So everybody has that view on the world already.
But what I help them is to Firstrecognize that you have that
frame, you hold it in your hand.First become aware that you have
that frame and how you view the world.
(33:07):
And then, I have a couple of revealing things on on my
slides, that help them, to have that, aha moment where they say
like, huh. Now I see the world differently
by just changing my perspective because that can help you to
again, see an opportunity in every problem.
(33:28):
Again, we can't change most of the situations, but what we can
change is how we view those situations, our perspective.
And so you were Before classes, I wear sunglasses.
Sometimes I probably need some glasses soon, too.
And so everybody wears these glasses in using that metaphor.
Everybody has a perspective on how they view the world and how
(33:49):
you view other people how you view other situations, how you
basically view the world. And so, if you can become aware
of what that is, it's called thesubject object move.
You look literally at your your Post-It note until I call.
That's, that's how I view the world and then In trying to
change that change the angle zoom in zoom out.
(34:12):
You have a powerful tool that helps you to really view the
world differently and that changes your mind State.
I love that Frederick on that note tell us a little bit about
your book. When will we be able to hold it
in our hands? Does it already have a title?
And also for those of you who are interested and will clearly
put the links in the show notes but how can we follow your
(34:34):
incredible work? How can we see you speak?
See you on social media Etc. Sarah.
Perfect. Yes yes sir the book hopefully
we'll come out beginning of nextyear, that's the goal I'm
currently on my last chapter which is called Dimension X
which is something I want reveal.
Now it's something I'm very veryexcited about so it is in the
(34:55):
last pages I'm writing and so far I'm super excited about it
because what I try to do is really three things.
The first one is obviously telling a couple of personal
anecdotes just stories. He's that we're helping me at
Google at Stanford but like withthe UN and other organizations
(35:15):
just to help people to have thatfuture Eddie mind state in
develop that. So there's lots of personal
anecdotes and stories. The second thing is I'm actually
featuring some some googlers that I personally worked with
trained and help grow this Future Ready mindset as well.
And so these stories are just incredible ranging from someone
(35:37):
being on Mental Health, If to then become the world champion
deadlift, another person kind oflike also losing their jobs.
But then seeing that as the biggest opportunity in the end
their lives to really do something incredible now and so
featuring those schools has beenjust for me personally like a
great way of reconnecting with those folks but also at the same
(36:00):
time highlighting that literallyeveryone in the world can
cultivate these dimensions of a Futurity mind state And the
third thing is these practical, what I call train your minds,
the exercises that help you to also grow that future-ready
mindset. And I think everybody, you know,
can use those, those activities on a daily basis in different
(36:24):
circumstances wherever they are.And so, that's for me as an
educator and a person who loves to reimagine education, it's
something very powerful. I think that I want to give
people access to so I'm tremendously excited.
I hope people are excited. You can find me on all the
popular platforms. I'm trying to share a little bit
more about what I'm finding in, what I'm finding out about the
(36:48):
future. But also, how we can prepare
ourselves for the future, and I'm sharing personal anecdotes
personal experiences and experiments I'm doing as well.
And so, please follow along Frederick absolutely phenomenal
to have you here on the podcast.I'm really I stuck for your
book. We will clearly clearly send
this out to everybody. We know, I personally can't wait
(37:08):
to read. Read it.
In the meantime, I will follow and we will all should follow
your work. You're very generous in sharing
your insights on those platforms.
So highly encourage everybody tofollow Frederick, thank you so
much. This was an ink, absolutely
incredible conversation about becoming future ready and really
altering your mind state to be future ready and be an optimist
(37:30):
about the future because there is a lot to be optimistic about
in the future. Frederick, thank you so much.
Thank you so much Pascal. I'm again like a big fan of
yours. Rick, I think for being so
generous in Sharing how technology also will help us
move into the future, your dailyweekly monthly insights that
you're sharing are super valuable I think for everyone
(37:52):
and again I just really like that.
We as friends we are both futureOptimist but we also can't wait
to live in the future. And so I think that's something
very powerful as a mind state tojust have that excitement about
the next moment. The next day, whatever, the
future. Future will hold because I truly
believe that we have a little bit more control.
(38:14):
If we cultivate that future-ready mindset of what's
going to happen and we're going to have a little bit more
choices as well. So thanks everyone for listening
and that see you in the future, on those words.
Thank you so much. Hey, it's Pascal.
Thanks for tuning in on this episode of disrupt disruption.
If you want more, check out the other episodes we have on this
(38:36):
podcast. And if you liked it, do us a
favor. Go on your podcasting platform
of choice, iTunes, Google play, whatever it is, and leave a
quick review, it helps tremendously with getting the
insights from our guests out into the world.
If you have any questions, send me an email, you can reach me at
Pascal at fee net.com. Thank you so much for listening
(38:56):
and I will hear you here soon.
Welcome to disrupt disruption. A series of intimate interviews
with global thought leaders and practitioners operating at the
intersection of business leadership and Technology, we
discussing all things, Innovation and disruption and
how to not only survive. But thrive in these times of
exponentially accelerating change, trusted by Seals,
Founders and leaders globally for the latest.
(00:23):
Take on business models methods,culture and Leadership.
We cut to the chase debunk, the hype and get real.
You're in great company, I'm your host, Pascal finet
co-founder of be radical. Hey everybody.
Pascal here. We are back with another episode
of disrupt disruption at. This is a reboot and I couldn't
(00:46):
be happier to have someone very special with us.
A dear friend of mine, dr. Frederick furth to introduce
Frederick, he was Google's firstand former Chief Innovation
evangelist which is where we met.
And is the adjunct professor at Stanford University's d.school,
very briefly about his incredible achievement at
(01:07):
Google. He founded the Google garage
which is their Innovation space.I actually spent quite a bit of
time in the garage, he created Google's first Innovation
laboratory CSI, lab launched Google's future Leadership
Institute that a Google school for leaders has mentored and let
a diverse Global community of 600-plus innovation evangelists
(01:28):
and Frederick. First of all, I'm super happy.
To have you but secondly you left Google how our Earth are
you leaving this incredible company?
Hello my friend, Pascal. So great to spend time with you,
it's always an honor to speak with you as I respect you as a,
as a human being as a friend, asan inspiration.
And I'm super glad that we can talk.
(01:49):
And yet, let's Dive Right In. I think it's actually good
timing because it's exactly one year ago, June.
First, I left Google. I decided that there's bigger
things waiting for me which sounds somehow strange, but I
felt that innovation. Training tens of thousands of
googlers in an innovation mindset and so forth.
(02:11):
Was an incredible opportunity. Was just the one of the best
things I could ever dreamed of to do.
But at the same time, I felt Innovation is for a few, but the
future is for everyone, which means that I was more Curious.
Now to explore how I can help people around the world.
Develop what I call a future ready, mind state to help them
(02:33):
really not just prepare for the future.
But actually shape their own future.
And so I decided that and I shared with a couple of friends
at Google and asked around, likewhat do you think?
If I if I pursue that and everybody was super excited, I
heard about this opportunity andso forth.
And a day later, I signed also abook deal which was an
(02:55):
incredible opportunity now to actually help.
I hope a lot of people around the world to live a future-ready
life. It just feels incredible to be
on that learning curve. Again, and explore new things as
well. So you said a whole bunch of
things I want to unpack. Those you have been described
not just by me but many other people as a future Optimist
(03:16):
which I absolutely adore as a title.
I would put myself into the samecamp without that label.
You also said, just something. I want a dick and double click a
little bit. On the you said, Innovation is
for the few of the future is foreveryone.
And in the end, there's a littlebit of inside baseball.
We had a call yesterday to talk a little bit, or do you want to
talk about today? And in that call, you mentioned
(03:37):
this already and it Triggered for me.
This interesting quote, there's a quote from Charles E Kettering
who said I'm interested in the future because I expect to spend
the rest of my life in the future, which I really like say
a little bit more, it's someone who has worked in Innovation.
I mean, that was the up, your life for whatever good 13 years
or 12 years at Google, it is your life to certain extent,
(04:00):
clearly in your work at StanfordUniversity.
And now, and we should make surethat people know this, you
advising some of the largest companies in the world, Hold on
this mind state of being future-ready say a little bit
more of what do you mean? The future is for everybody but
Innovation is only for the for afew for a couple of you Pascal.
(04:21):
The interesting thing is that when we look into the future,
some people are excited about itand I count both of us into that
category. We can't wait to live in the
future. I read kind of like you
predictions and kind of like howyou view technology being a big
driver of Ovation and so forth. But I also speak a lot of with
(04:42):
humans around the world around, how they feel very excited about
the future and can't wait to live in a future because they
all feel the future is going to be a better one.
It's but there's also another group of people that are anxious
about the future, they Fear the Future literally, they tell me
they want to live in the past, right?
They want to either kind of likestay where they are or bring the
(05:06):
the times back from the past andFor me, that's not an option
because I believe that everything will be better in the
future because it's in our hands.
We are what I feel in control ofshaping our own future
technology brings us into the future.
But our mind state, right? Our way of how we view the world
(05:28):
decides, how this future will look like.
And so I am tremendously excitedjust to help people.
To also feel very excited about the future because Because we
have an opportunity to do thingsbetter simply put, and you can
look at everything around the world that can be imagined.
Not just imagined better, but actually can be done better as
(05:51):
well. And so that's really what I want
to focus on and you mentioned interesting quotes and I think
there's another quote that we both kind of like share a lot,
which is the future cannot be predicted, but the future can be
invented. And I think a lot of times when
talking to Two people in large organizations, in startups
(06:11):
governments, and so forth. Most people focus on the
prediction part. Interestingly, people want to
know, hey, how does tomorrow look like?
How does the next year? Look like?
How does the next 10 years? Look like Frederick, tell us or
Pascal. Tell us and I'm sure you say the
same. We don't have the answer.
Nobody has the answer because you just can't predict how the
(06:33):
next moment will turn out. Yeah.
And I think that's okay because we should focus actually on the
second. Art of that quote, which is
Futures can be invented and everybody can invent their own
future because you have a choiceand many choices usually, and
how you make your next move? How you decide your next step?
(06:54):
How you write that next email tosomeone?
We haven't talked to her how youengage in your relationship, how
you conduct your work and so forth.
So, we all have these choices and I think I want to help
people too, to realize these choices, As they have but also
make better choices eventually in that vein, I'm curious.
And let's do this as a quick sidebar.
(07:16):
Everybody, I know talks about chechi ptai large language
models and their impact on the world and the reactions very
much as you described. They range from being very
excited about it too, like sheerTerror, I'm curious and we don't
need to talk all that much aboutAI but I'm really curious.
What was your reaction about sixmonths ago when chechi Beauty
(07:37):
hit the scene at? What was your feeling?
Yes. Like most of these tremendous
changes. Everyone is in the first couple
of seconds experiencing kind of like a shock state, right?
You like when the pandemic hit Mars 2020 or wildfires here
burning in Santa Cruz mountains,like a mile away from our house
(07:59):
or flooding just recently happened as well.
The rain just didn't stop or chechi PT appeared in November
of last year. All of those things are changes
and we humans usually approach this with a sense of curiosity,
but also fear sometimes literally kind of like we are,
(08:21):
we sometimes just stifled to be honest, but I over the of the
many years try to train myself to shorten that time, where
something happens, a change occurs, and how I respond to it.
And so you can actually Train that which is which is amazing.
Right. We are our brains are like these
(08:43):
these magical tools that we can train like our bodies.
And so, for me, whenever A change is happening, I'm trying
to immediately look for the opportunity and in chat, she
Beauty, you don't have to look very much or very long, right?
I was super excited to see what's happening there and I
remember a couple of months before they launch.
(09:04):
I was with you, actually in a magazine with, with Sam.
Founder of open Ai and so we knew kind of like what's on his
mind and what he's thinking about the future and so forth.
So I was somehow expecting that something magical will appear in
the world. At the same time, I saw
tremendous opportunities for everyone.
The first thing I did was actually sharing with my mother,
(09:27):
my mom is a very curious open-minded person.
And so it was a fascinating conversation.
We had about the opportunities, but also about what potential We
can happen in the world because that technology for me is
something where it's more than the iPhone moment.
Which me a lot of people say, right?
(09:48):
Because not everyone could afford an iPhone right now.
We have a moment where everyone has access to a very powerful
tool that allows you to do amazing, amazing things and it's
an even more powerful moment. So it's something related to
like discovering fire and somebody is now running around
the torch coming out of a cave. Of and people like, you know,
(10:10):
burning their hands. But all that's also at the same
time, seeing lots of opportunities.
What can be done with it? So, it was again, like, all of
these changes a moment where I just look for the opportunity
immediately and I'm curious. What we as Humanity can do with
it. You said something just now
which really makes me incrediblycurious and I'm pretty sure
every listener to this podcast will ask themselves the same
(10:32):
question you said you can train this and of course you're
writing a book about this. You're writing a book about
future Readiness and the mind. Wait, how do I train this?
How do I become like you? Yeah, it's not so much becoming
Frederick, it's for me. Five Dimensions, I explore in
the book which really over the past years have become clearly
(10:54):
the most vital pieces of be being future ready?
And those five are things you can cultivate, you can train,
right? First thing is optimism, which I
just shared second. One is openness.
The third dimension of that future mindset is curiosity, and
we have experimentation and empathy.
(11:16):
So these five for me kind of like clearly Define a future
Eddie mind State. And I mean that when you try to
really cultivate these five Dimensions, literally, how you
view the world, I see that you have a chance to actually shape
a better future moving forward. Better future for yourself.
(11:39):
Self and a better future for everyone.
And I think that's very powerfulbecause there's two things that
are interesting. The first thing is, everyone has
these already built in. So we have a sense of optimism,
some more, some less, but we generally as a species of human
beings we are optimistic sometimes.
(11:59):
Openness curiosity. Actually we are born as very
curious people. A sense of experimentation
trying things out. And during the pandemic we saw a
peacock Of everyone experimenting with their work
with our relationships with everything, how we shopped and
so forth, how we educate students and so forth and
empathy. We all have a sense of empathy,
(12:20):
but what I want to do is I want to elevate all of these
Dimensions. So that you truly whenever
something happens, any situationthat you can tap into these two,
then see a better future for yourself and create a better
future for For yourself to move forward.
(12:41):
I think that's something very powerful.
You ask that question how we cantrain that.
So now, the book is a very practical guide that allows you
to do these exercises that help you to train your mind in being
future ready. So you don't have to go in like
a 10 day Meditation Retreat. As meditating 10 hours a day
which I did or you don't have todo cold plunging every morning
(13:03):
after you get up these these canbe done, they can be helpful and
we have the the science and Research behind those things.
But there's easier ways we can train ourselves in these
dimensions of a future mind State.
And I want to give everyone access to that.
If you can give us a sneak peek of any one of those five
Dimensions, someone was listening to this right now and
(13:24):
saying man I'm burning, I want to try this out.
What would be a practice? What would be a tool?
They cannot deploy tomorrow to become more Future, Ready?
Absolutely, yes. So let's maybe use a metaphor.
A metaphor for me is maybe your inbox we all have email.
Inboxes some of us live in it unfortunately, right?
(13:46):
But in the inbox you receive different emails every day, it
might be things that occur as changes in your personal
relationships. It could be changes in your
professional circumstances, likegetting a promotion being laid
off and to be honest and so forth Health changes, you get an
Notification from your doctor orsomething happened in your in
(14:07):
your family, financial changes, geographical changes lifestyle
changes, you name it. All these things appear in your
inbox and now what when you apply these five dimensions of a
future ready, mind stain you canalready see if you're using.
For example open. You're open to exploring all of
these emails and just trying to see what is what is in that
(14:30):
email? What's the situation that is
described? A changes in your professional
circumstance, you being laid offoptimism, then can be applied
while you say log, okay? I got laid off, which happened
to, you know, 12, thousands of my colleagues just recently and
speaking to some of them they already saw the opportunity
(14:52):
immediately because they said Frederick to be honest.
After a couple of days I think this is the greatest opportunity
in my life because now I can focus on something that is truly
important. And Meaningful for me.
So they practiced looking for the opportunity in that email in
your inbox. That was basically saying that
(15:13):
you don't have a job anymore. And so I believe it's the only
way forward because you can't change the situation.
We all know these emails that arrived at have changes in your
personal relationship, Health changes Financial changes in all
of those changes, they can't be changed.
They are these situations. But what we can control is our
(15:34):
response. And so probably the first thing
you can practice yourself is becoming aware.
How do I respond to these things?
A my like angry and kind of likeright back immediately.
Am I stepping back? Maybe go for a quick walk.
What's my response to these and becoming aware of that?
I think is the first great exercise.
You can do because then becomingaware helps you to also be maybe
(15:58):
more thoughtful about how we respond and maybe look for the
opportunity in these changes. Curious to hear.
How do you, how do you overcome this?
Like the little devil on your shoulder?
I see a lot of people when we talk about optimism and
openness, they exhibit is on thesurface level and then they very
(16:20):
quickly fall into this. Yeah.
But the world is terrible and climate change and just look
what's happening in in Russia and the Ukraine.
How do you overcome the this this niggling voice in your
head? I'm I'm not arguing that.
These changes are not happening,right?
I think we have to be, we have to recognize that there are
(16:40):
terrible things that are happening all the time.
They're happening to us as individuals.
They're happening to us being inour professional roles, they're
happening to us in our relationships, they're happening
around the world, bad things happen.
And I think we need to recognizethat.
But how do you move forward? Are you kind of like,
complaining a lot, right? And we now we both know like
(17:05):
lots of people who are just can't stop complaining, right?
It's just, it's just a series ofcomplaints about anything
finding the reasons like why this happened and complaining
that it happened and so forth. For me, that's not a valid
strategy. The best strategy for me is
recognizing that a problem appeared and a change appeared
and then finding the opportunityto Only move forward and create
(17:30):
something valuable out of that because otherwise, you literally
lock yourself in your room, you pull the pillow over your head
or the blanket and you are stuckand I want to help people to get
unstuck. I want them to throw away the
pillow, get the blanket off you,and move into action mode.
Like what can I do now? Where's the opportunity for
(17:52):
Innovation, where's the opportunity for change?
Because I believe that's the only way we can actually really
solve these big problems that are right in front of us.
If you don't mind me sharing an anecdote of an experience.
We both had. So, we were both invited to a
lunge with the former German Minister of Economics admire and
(18:14):
it was this beautiful lunch in Silicon Valley.
Ironically, he came to Silicon Valley to see self-driving cars,
which I already thought was kindof a weird thing to do.
Coming from Germany, the countrywhere cars are truly elevated,
to a whole different level, but fair enough, whatever.
And You have this like around the table conversation and you
(18:35):
made this really funny comment, you said you made this comment.
You said, like, all right, so two plus two is five and then I
admire immediately jumped up andsaid this is wrong Frederick and
tell us a little bit about, likeI thought it was.
First of all, I thought was a really funny thing, but you did
this, of course on purpose, thattwo plus, two is not five.
But so why did you do this? And what was the, what was your
(18:57):
reaction to his reaction? Yeah, I remember.
Member that situation, it was inPalo Alto and we sat around this
big large table with lots of Brilliant Minds, coming from all
different parts of of Silicon Valley, also journalists, some
other politicians there as well.And I usually like to show
(19:18):
people how they think by giving them an experience.
And so for me, it was very important but as always, it was
risky because I didn't know the reactions, obviously, because we
haven't practiced that. And so what I did is I invited
Everyone in the room. And we were about 40 45, people
sitting in this room out, invited everyone to close their
eyes and we can do that right now, right?
(19:40):
Just closing your eyes for a moment.
And then I started it. Two plus three equals 5/4 plus 3
equals 75 plus 4 equals 10 and then immediately mr.
Altmire was. Oh there's there's a mistake as
(20:03):
I like wait a second. I have one more and then I said,
two plus two equals four and so I gave four equations and on
purpose one. One was wrong, right?
And it was just fascinating because he was the first person
to yell out loud. There's a mistake right for you
made a mistake, right? It isn't exactly.
(20:25):
That's the way we think that's ingrained in our way of thinking
is that we have that negativity bias, right?
That's the description of it. And it's based on our Evolution,
since the dawn of humankind, we were trained in a way to think
that way we work. Around in the desert.
And in the bushes, we had to look for the mistakes in our
(20:47):
environment because that literally helped us to survive.
You had to recognize the danger first because if you had that
advantage and had that negativity bias, you were
actually protecting yourself andyou protect the whole Community
by telling them. Hey, there is a dangerous tiger
out there or this Berry could bepoisonous or something like
(21:08):
that. So you had to spot the mistakes.
And it's still ingrained in our way of thinking, which is
fascinating, because I think, nowadays, we need to change.
We need to change our way of thinking, because recognizing
that there were three equations that were correct, so it's 75%,
right. There's more right than wrong,
(21:29):
was not, what was shared. Nobody said, Lee Frederick.
Great job. You did more right than wrong.
It's just, it's just fascinatingwhen you translate that into the
Innovation space and we About new ideas, you mentioned chat
CPT right or you mentioned. Self-driving cars or stuff like
that. Everybody's looking for the
(21:49):
mistakes first, everybody's looking for the flaws, spotting
things that potentially could gowrong or already went wrong.
That's not helping us to make progress.
It's good that we spot these things, but only focusing on
these instead. Now, we have to stop, can't get
it done or can't get it changes.Not helping.
That's, we have to build on the opportunity that there's a
(22:10):
couple of things that I Working out, so let's continue.
Let's try to make these even better and I think it's always
the, the, a Sayers kind of like the people who said, hey great,
there's something working out. Clearly, let's make progress,
let's move forward and it's not kind of like the people who only
focus on the, on the mistakes. First that actually, help us
(22:31):
make progress. And so it's, it was a
fascinating experience and I still remember that.
It perfectly worked out to demonstrate, how the negativity
bias is, is he enduring us to explore the opportunities in
every new innovation. It also landed you a very good
headliner. Remember this in a German
Business Journal as they were journalists with us at this day,
(22:52):
I want to zoom out from here a little bit because what you just
described makes me think about education, you've got three
children of your own you teach at Stanford University, clearly,
one of the best education institutions in the world.
You also together with your wiferun, a nonprofit organization to
have to lie, which brings Our space has two kids and schools.
(23:13):
I'm curious to hear from you as you thinking about future
Readiness. Clearly, we need to get future
Readiness to our children. How do you think about this?
What do we need to teach children?
How is it probably different to what we as adults need to
unlearn I guess and relearn say a little bit about how you
seeing like what do we do with our children?
(23:34):
Such a such a great question andit's a question that is truly as
you mention on my mind, a lot, right?
How can we reimagine education? It has been on my mind for quite
some time because my PhD was actually in that field where I
try to develop and design a new approach to education.
(23:55):
Recognizing that technology is apowerful tool that we actually
should use more in education. And so it was way a back in the
times when the first podcast came out when Web 2.0 was hip
web blogs and Wiki's and all of those things were tools that
were just got just emerging. And for me I saw a tremendous
(24:18):
opportunity to include those tools in education in schools
universities and so forth. Fascinating at that time.
Nobody was interested. Everybody told me, hey, our
education is working, right? We still don't need technology.
We still have a teacher in the Teaching students their
knowledge and they need to recite it in that test, which
(24:40):
was the education system back then, and still is in most of
the places in around the world till the pandemic.
It, and for me, again, realizingthat this is the best
opportunity now to reimagine education, because everybody's
forced now, starting from teachers, parents students, to
(25:02):
really rethink what Ian actuallyis and how we can teach our
children. And for us, we started a small
experiment here. We actually build our own School
House called the, a school and aframe building simply put
together because we wanted to give our kids, their own school,
and their own space, because we as adults have a hard time to
(25:24):
work out of our bed or bedrooms,right?
Or our kitchen tables, right? And it's the same for children
as well. So we wanted to give them their
own space, and so I actually designed and help.
This is a school where our kids every morning walked up a couple
of steps took their their schoollunch with the him and got
online education, right? So our middle one, Joshua was
(25:45):
learning how to to read and write purely online, totally
works, right? It's possible.
I think because we also have ourthree kids are at a public
school. And we were lucky, because we
had really, really good teachers.
And they immediately saw the opportunity as well went on
Google classroom and other two. Tools and technologies that were
available and immediately built a new curriculum and had some
(26:09):
interesting experiments. They were doing.
For example, they used zoom and one of the things they did is
they basically put the kids intotheir individual.
Breakout rooms, gave them a taskto read something or write
something and they didn't tell them when they will appear.
So the kids were not leaving obviously because they always
(26:29):
felt like, oh, the teacher mightshow up in the next minute or so
which was fascinating. The students were sitting in
front of a computer in their ownbreakout room doing reading and
writing in all these exercises, which was really fascinating.
So that's just one of the stories of how I think there was
an opportunity to reimagine education.
Unfortunately. We miss the opportunity at a
(26:53):
larger scale. I think there were Pockets
around the world that really stayed with using technology in
a very effective way in education, but I think we could
have done more. And so now I'm trying to really
also with this book, to influence a future curriculum
because I feel if you can teach optimism, openness curiosity,
(27:18):
experimentation and empathy to Children very early on and make
that part of the curriculum. I think you have a tremendous
opportunity, not just to make these kids future ready.
But to give them, these mindsetsthat are really important
nowadays because as we see that writing reading math, kind of
(27:39):
like all of these subjects are being challenged with technology
and so I think we have to see that as an opportunity to now
reimagine. How a curriculum could look like
for our children. And maybe have a class on
creativity and Innovation, that might be perfectly suited for,
for the Next Generation to really help us to solve these
(28:00):
big problems that are ahead of us.
I love that Frederick. This is an incredible
conversation. I really like the the breadth of
it and really getting into the Mind state of being future-ready
kind of wrapping this. I'd be curious to hear from you,
for our listeners. What would you recommend as a
daily practice? For someone who says, I want to,
I want to be come a future Optimist.
(28:21):
I or I want to become a better future Optimist.
I want to become future-ready. I want to change my mind state
to become future ready. So, what would you do as like,
I'm a big fan of Habitual changelike, flossing, your teeth is a
habit. Nobody likes to do it.
What do you think? Is a daily practice?
What do you recommend people to do?
It's a great question. So there's many things,
(28:42):
obviously, you can do. And I'm a, I'm a person who
loves to experiment with myself,as well, trying to so many
different things. As I mentioned, maybe more
extreme things like the 10-day silent Retreat. 10 hours of
meditation. Each day dipping into three
degree, cold water, every morning for 4 minutes, and 40
(29:03):
seconds, and many other things. I have my daily meditation
practice, as well, which helps me to just Become aware around
that question. Are you the master of your mind
or is the Mind mastering you? Which, for me is just
fascinating because most of the time, it's the Mind mastering
(29:24):
you, where we have a hard time even for one minute to focus our
attention on our breath, which is just fascinating the simplest
thing in the world. Just breathing through your
nose, and breathing out through your nose or to your mouth.
Yeah. It's very hard.
For us to pay attention to. And so one of the things that I
(29:46):
might just invite people to do is start with maybe a meditation
practice. That is just a minute long.
It's not 10 hours each day but just that one minute that allows
you to become aware of your thought, you know, your
feelings, how busy the mind is or not?
What's your emotional state and so forth?
(30:07):
Because for me a mind state is really The individuals inner
attitude that shape their perceptions and guide their
responses to situations interactions and daily
activities. So if you can become a more
aware of how you respond to situations and coming back to
the analogy of or metaphor of your inbox, where, like, all of
(30:29):
these new situations are waitingfor you.
How do you respond to these? And I think, as soon as you
realize that between these triggers that we all Sieve
because things are changing all the time and your response.
There's a little time or end. We have control of that time and
how we respond to these things. And I think if you can become a
(30:52):
little bit more aware, I think you're doing already the best
work towards a future ready, mind State, because it is
essentially the mental and emotional framework through
which a person views and navigates the world.
Yeah. So it's simply put how you view
yourself and the world and I think We can do a better job in
in that so that we truly can shape that future that we want
(31:17):
to see happening. Let me lean into my curiosity
and we will share in a minute. I will ask you to share a little
bit, how people can find. You will talk a little bit more
about the book, but let me very briefly lenient one curiosity.
So we're Instagram bodies. You've got a wonderful Instagram
with lots and lots of really interesting content.
And I see people holding up on amany fake pictures.
When you are in a larger crowd. Speaking on a stage, I see,
(31:40):
People holding up. What looks like a Post-It note
with a hole in it. The size of a coin.
What is that? Yes, that's a lot of the
exercises and prototyping. Currently as you can see behind
me I have a couple of prototypesjust here of these exercises
that help you train your mind tobe future ready.
(32:03):
And one of the exercises is around radical optimism.
And what I do is I give everyonein the audience.
You could be an Audience of 50 students such as recently at
Stanford, or like, we had over. 1,500 people in another
audience, just recently in Germany, and I give everyone a
Post-It note and I invite them to use that Post-It note, in a
(32:23):
way, they probably have never used it, because I asked him to
rip a hole in it. And the first thing I mentioned
is that now you have your perspective, your frame on the
world, Looking through this Frame is something that
everybody does all the time. But what's interesting is,
(32:45):
everyone has a different frame. Every hole looks very different,
right? Could be a smaller one.
It could be like, rectangular one Circle one and so forth.
So everybody has that view on the world already.
But what I help them is to Firstrecognize that you have that
frame, you hold it in your hand.First become aware that you have
that frame and how you view the world.
(33:07):
And then, I have a couple of revealing things on on my
slides, that help them, to have that, aha moment where they say
like, huh. Now I see the world differently
by just changing my perspective because that can help you to
again, see an opportunity in every problem.
(33:28):
Again, we can't change most of the situations, but what we can
change is how we view those situations, our perspective.
And so you were Before classes, I wear sunglasses.
Sometimes I probably need some glasses soon, too.
And so everybody wears these glasses in using that metaphor.
Everybody has a perspective on how they view the world and how
(33:49):
you view other people how you view other situations, how you
basically view the world. And so, if you can become aware
of what that is, it's called thesubject object move.
You look literally at your your Post-It note until I call.
That's, that's how I view the world and then In trying to
change that change the angle zoom in zoom out.
(34:12):
You have a powerful tool that helps you to really view the
world differently and that changes your mind State.
I love that Frederick on that note tell us a little bit about
your book. When will we be able to hold it
in our hands? Does it already have a title?
And also for those of you who are interested and will clearly
put the links in the show notes but how can we follow your
(34:34):
incredible work? How can we see you speak?
See you on social media Etc. Sarah.
Perfect. Yes yes sir the book hopefully
we'll come out beginning of nextyear, that's the goal I'm
currently on my last chapter which is called Dimension X
which is something I want reveal.
Now it's something I'm very veryexcited about so it is in the
(34:55):
last pages I'm writing and so far I'm super excited about it
because what I try to do is really three things.
The first one is obviously telling a couple of personal
anecdotes just stories. He's that we're helping me at
Google at Stanford but like withthe UN and other organizations
(35:15):
just to help people to have thatfuture Eddie mind state in
develop that. So there's lots of personal
anecdotes and stories. The second thing is I'm actually
featuring some some googlers that I personally worked with
trained and help grow this Future Ready mindset as well.
And so these stories are just incredible ranging from someone
(35:37):
being on Mental Health, If to then become the world champion
deadlift, another person kind oflike also losing their jobs.
But then seeing that as the biggest opportunity in the end
their lives to really do something incredible now and so
featuring those schools has beenjust for me personally like a
great way of reconnecting with those folks but also at the same
(36:00):
time highlighting that literallyeveryone in the world can
cultivate these dimensions of a Futurity mind state And the
third thing is these practical, what I call train your minds,
the exercises that help you to also grow that future-ready
mindset. And I think everybody, you know,
can use those, those activities on a daily basis in different
(36:24):
circumstances wherever they are.And so, that's for me as an
educator and a person who loves to reimagine education, it's
something very powerful. I think that I want to give
people access to so I'm tremendously excited.
I hope people are excited. You can find me on all the
popular platforms. I'm trying to share a little bit
more about what I'm finding in, what I'm finding out about the
(36:48):
future. But also, how we can prepare
ourselves for the future, and I'm sharing personal anecdotes
personal experiences and experiments I'm doing as well.
And so, please follow along Frederick absolutely phenomenal
to have you here on the podcast.I'm really I stuck for your
book. We will clearly clearly send
this out to everybody. We know, I personally can't wait
(37:08):
to read. Read it.
In the meantime, I will follow and we will all should follow
your work. You're very generous in sharing
your insights on those platforms.
So highly encourage everybody tofollow Frederick, thank you so
much. This was an ink, absolutely
incredible conversation about becoming future ready and really
altering your mind state to be future ready and be an optimist
(37:30):
about the future because there is a lot to be optimistic about
in the future. Frederick, thank you so much.
Thank you so much Pascal. I'm again like a big fan of
yours. Rick, I think for being so
generous in Sharing how technology also will help us
move into the future, your dailyweekly monthly insights that
you're sharing are super valuable I think for everyone
(37:52):
and again I just really like that.
We as friends we are both futureOptimist but we also can't wait
to live in the future. And so I think that's something
very powerful as a mind state tojust have that excitement about
the next moment. The next day, whatever, the
future. Future will hold because I truly
believe that we have a little bit more control.
(38:14):
If we cultivate that future-ready mindset of what's
going to happen and we're going to have a little bit more
choices as well. So thanks everyone for listening
and that see you in the future, on those words.
Thank you so much. Hey, it's Pascal.
Thanks for tuning in on this episode of disrupt disruption.
If you want more, check out the other episodes we have on this
(38:36):
podcast. And if you liked it, do us a
favor. Go on your podcasting platform
of choice, iTunes, Google play, whatever it is, and leave a
quick review, it helps tremendously with getting the
insights from our guests out into the world.
If you have any questions, send me an email, you can reach me at
Pascal at fee net.com. Thank you so much for listening
(38:56):
and I will hear you here soon.
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