Future Proof: Reinventing Work in the Age of Acceleration

By Diana Wu David

For too many of us, work has become an inescapable treadmill of personal sacrifice. But having the career we want shouldn't require us to lose ourselves. We all deserve a humanistic and sustainable job environment—and now we can have it.

In Future Proof, Diana Wu David tells how her own career-focused existence shifted after the suicide of a friend, prompting her to realize there was a better way to work. Drawing on real-life stories, arguing for being truly present in life, she shows you how you can use innovation in your career and life—including experimentation, collaboration, reinvention, and recalibrating success—to make your career more resilient, relevant, competitive, and enjoyable in an ever-changing global landscape.

You can have a prosperous long career packed with meaning, joy, and purpose—and this book is the tool that will help you get off that treadmill and run free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781544513591

Book preview

]>

]>

Advance Praise

Future Proof is a great read for corporate executives looking to reinvent themselves in an ever more entrepreneurial economy.

—Dorie Clark, author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You and Stand Out

Diana’s ability to see what senior leaders need to navigate the future of work is unparalleled.

—Donna Eiby, Future Work Skills Academy

It is both a curse and a blessing of our fraught times that reinvention is no longer an option, but an obligation. Resilience rather than any formal qualification has become the key to both success and satisfaction. For those of us who would welcome a guide, I cannot recommend Future Proof too strongly.

—Henny Sender, Financial Times

Sometimes it takes a tragedy to create the conditions for a new mindset and way of living. A challenge that emerges is to honour the loss of a loved one and to make what happens next bigger and better than what might have been before. Diana has discovered a playbook for how to be resilient from both a personal and professional perspective—the same approach will future proof your life and career.

—Peter Williams, Citibank, Resolve Foundation, Music For Life International

There are many paths to a successful career. In Future Proof: Reinventing Work in an Age of Acceleration, Diana shows us how a long work life can yield many paths to impact and fulfillment.

—Willard McCloud III, Global Head, Diversity & Inclusion and Culture, Pfizer

Future Proof is an important contribution to the Leadership section of bookstores as Diana is a master at getting leaders to step back, reflect, and make positive changes.

—Steve DeKrey, Associate Dean, Founding Director, Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program; Chairman, International Academic Council, Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO

This book is not just for executives—this book is for everyone from college grads to your grandparents. We all need to reinvent ourselves constantly in an era of disruption, globalization, shifting trends, and new opportunities. Build on your strengths and find awesome new ways to succeed.

—Angie Lau, ex-Bloomberg TV Anchor, Founder of Narramur and Forkast News

The ones at the top today run the biggest risk of extinction tomorrow due to hubris and blind spots to their self-awareness. In essence, what got many senior leaders to the upper rungs of their ladders most certainly won’t get take them into the future. Future Proof is the mindset shift that corporate executives today need to be leaders of tomorrow.

—Gulnar Vaswani, Chief Culture Officer, Leadership Re-Imagined

Diana has created a must-read book for leaders considering what skills they will need to future proof not only their organizations but their own sense of meaning in an age of disruption and acceleration.

—Lale Kasebi, Founder & CEO, human-at.work

Everyone should read Future Proof, a real life guide to navigate, reinvent and measure their futures in the fast-changing world of the fourth industrial revolution.

—Clive Lee, CEO, Yidan Prize

]>

Copyright © 2018 Diana Wu David

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1359-1

]>

For Alan Wu, without whom none of this journey would be possible.

]>

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Learn: How and Why the World of Work Is Changing

1. The Future of Work

2. Invest in Yourself

Part II: Cultivate: The Virtues to Stay Engaged and Relevant

3. Experiment

4. Reinvent

5. Collaborate

6. Find Focus

Part III: Maximize: The Impact of Your Actions

7. Redefine Success

8. Rebalance Your Portfolio

Afterword

Appendix

Acknowledgments

About the Author

]>

future-proof

adjective

(of a product or system) unlikely to become obsolete.

verb

make (a product or system) future-proof.

this approach allows you to future-proof your applications

The concept of future-proofing is the process of anticipating the future and developing methods of minimizing the effects of shocks and stresses of future events. This term is commonly found in electronics, data storage, and communications systems.1

---

1 Oxford Dictionaries, English Oxford Living Dictionaries, accessed September 16, 2018, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/future-proof.

]>

Introduction

How do we stay relevant in this ever-changing landscape? How do we spot upcoming trends that might affect us before we are in the crosshairs of obsolescence and disruption? How do we brand ourselves outside of a corporate role to sustain a contribution on our own terms? How can we find a tribe of our own away from the corporate watercooler? How can we measure our progress without annual budgets and performance reviews?

We’re worried. We don’t have time. We don’t have bandwidth to answer all those calls and messages, not even the one from our doctor who will tell us to lay off the stress and long hours sitting at a desk or on a plane or in a conference room.

We like our work or are at least proud of what we’ve built—the skills and credibility. We have a lifestyle we enjoy. We are near the top of the mountain, if not at the summit. And yet, what have we sacrificed? Family? Health? Dreams of making a difference in the world? It seems like a pyrrhic victory, a string of carcasses strewn behind us that negate the true sense of achievement we were hoping to feel.

But people are talking about a hundred-year life. What could we do if we weren’t doing this job? Who would want to talk to us once that director or doctor or partner title wasn’t on our LinkedIn profile or business card?

Where would we start in planning for the future? We don’t want to look silly. We don’t want to seem ungrateful for all that we have and all that we’ve been given. But we’re also scared shitless that if we don’t do anything it will leave us vulnerable, our careers at the mercy of the company’s board or disruptions in industry over time.

In writing this book, I’m making a few assumptions. Like, you have enough financial or career capital to take some risks, even if it means skipping your regular cappuccino. I take for granted that making a meaningful contribution and intellectual stimulation is important; that it would feel great to know you could quit or keep your job, on your terms; that taking a sabbatical, a day, or a week off to get your mojo back—or move to paradise full-time for that matter—would be an improvement on the status quo. I am assuming it would give you a deep sense of purpose to know you were making more of a difference again.

If the idea of work and life on your terms brings a sigh of wistfulness, you’re not alone. You can wake up excited for the work ahead. The world needs you being creative, innovative, solving problems, building and investing in companies, connecting people, and mentoring the next generation.

You are not obsolete, but you may need to upgrade your operating system to future-proof your career and contributions to create more meaning, joy, and purpose in your life.

Let’s go.

Why I Wrote This Book

I’d known my best friend Charlotte’s husband for fifteen years. He wasn’t the social type. I was puzzled when the phone rang in my Hong Kong office and I heard George’s voice. He never called me.

Pressing the phone to my ear, I heard his familiar, steady voice. Diana, I need to tell you about Charlotte.

His voice wavered. She…she killed herself last night.

I went cold. Dumbstruck, I felt the blood drain from me.

What? Why? How did it happen? I asked, and again, Why?

I stared at the computer monitor, seeing nothing. Row after row of emails blurred into a gray, unimportant, and trivial mass. My hands went cold and seemed like they belonged to someone else as they grasped the phone. Panting and dizzy with confusion and heartbreak, I could feel my mind grasping for something to do to keep the world from spinning out of control, but suddenly everything about my neat little office at Financial Times seemed alien.

The door creaked open. Diana, we have a conference call in fifteen. Everything all right?

Yes, I’m fine. Just need a moment.

People speak about pivotal moments that serve as a wake-up call, an invitation to stop living on autopilot. Charlotte’s death made me realize the shortness of life and the futility of making do. When I looked around, I saw many other people feeling the same way. The senior people in the board director programs I had launched at Financial Times were looking out at the next twenty, thirty, or forty years of increasing longevity and wondering what their role would be as an elder in the business community. With the pace of change accelerating, technology rendering their knowledge obsolete, and a globally competitive landscape, few can rely on a nice pension and guaranteed well-paid corporate board position at retirement. At the top of their game they were peering over a cliff wondering what the stepping stone might be to a new life that allows them to re-balance and invest in the hobbies, relationships, and interests that were sacrificed to get to the top. The good news is that the life of narrow reliance on one specialty is a risk that can be lessened by investing in a wider realm of activities and a broader network of relationships.

Around the same time as Charlotte’s untimely death, TEDx was auditioning speakers for an event on the theme of crossroads. A friend encouraged me to try out, and I signed up for the audition. What did I have to say about crossroads? I wasn’t even sure, but this was an opportunity to practice storytelling, and that was part of becoming a better writer, which I aspired to be. I thought I’d probably fall flat on my face, but that was okay because I was putting myself out there, and I was trying.

I don’t know what I expected, but I told myself that if I could help just one person, it would all be worth it.

Unlike in past years, the decision was not up to the judges but to the several hundred people who they had invited for the TEDx open mic. Each table had a rating sheet for the speakers. As I approached the microphone on stage, I was terrified, but I started talking, and the more I talked, the more relaxed I became. I told them about my friend Charlotte and how we were going to start our own consulting company and take over the world. I told them about how we had both done pretty well for ourselves, but somewhere along the way, we had abandoned our dreams and settled for being the women other people expected us to be. I told them about losing Charlotte and how that had driven me to a crossroads in my own life. I could stay on the path of least resistance, or I could be brave and strive to build a life that made my heart sing.

After my talk, a woman approached me at the bar. I really needed to hear that right now, she said. We talked for a while, and I knew then that I had helped at least one person.

I was chosen to speak at the upcoming TEDx Stage Event.

I spent a long time writing my speech. It needed to be real and raw and authentic, but I worried that I might be committing career suicide. One of my friends who read the speech laughed and said that it looked like I was going to live out my midlife crisis onstage. Was it trivial and narcissistic? Was I crazy to share such a personal story? Would it be just passing gossip to people? I wrote more and practiced more and then went to rehearse my speech for the TEDx organizers. One, a computer science professor, said he could completely relate and asked me to make it more relatable to both women and men. A television anchor was fascinated and asked for more visceral detail. They actually wanted to listen and could see how it fit into their own lives. It was more than just my story. I had learned something important that other people needed to hear. I had something to share.

The TEDx was held at the Hong Kong Performing Arts Center. There were two thousand people in attendance. The masters of ceremony were Angie Lau, a charismatic Bloomberg TV anchor, and Jesko von den Steinen, an actor, choreographer, and filmmaker. They even