Fulcrum Conference 2019: A Recap

There is a phrase attributed to Archimedes: “Give me a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the whole world.” Though it’s not clear whether this was fake news - there’s no Twitter feed from that time to confirm its origin - it’s an inspiring perspective that urges us to focus our efforts, and to work together on actionable solutions for changing the world.

That’s why conference producer Heidi Kleinmaus and I convened the inaugural Fulcrum Conference on Solutions for the Future of Work, at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, November 12-14, 2019. Our goal was to bring together what we call “leading thinkers and thinking leaders” to collaborate on strategies for solving some of the greatest challenges in creating a positive future of work.

Why Detroit? As long-time conference producers, we could have brought people together in San Francisco or New York. But communities like Detroit sit at the intersection of the dramatic shifts in the world of work, and the solutions that are being developed there and in similar places across the country and around the globe need to be shared, amplified, and scaled.

Because there are so many different stakeholders in the world of work, it’s tempting to try to bring together people from just one arena, such as communities or Human Resources. But as we did in co-founding conferences like SoCap, our commitment was to bridge across silos, helping a range of stakeholders to connect with others whom they otherwise might never have met. That’s why Fulcrum brought together over 300 registered attendees representing workers, employers, communities, foundations, investors, researchers, educators, libraries, policy, and startups  

We were also committed to “uncomfortable conversations,” dialog between people focused on issues that may be sources of traditional conflict. We’ve found that one of the reasons so many of our collective challenges remain unresolved is that we don’t question enough why change is so hard, and what the fundamental drivers are of our behaviors. Only by challenging our assumptions and working together on “win-win solutions” can we actually move the needle.

Focus on the Worker

It can be daunting to try to cover all of the many issues that are typically included in discussions about the future of work. Will robots and software take every job? Should everyone become an Artificial Intelligence programmer? What is happening to the workplace? Will much of work become distributed across global teams? What’s the future of human resources in organizations? Why must we all become lifelong learners?

That’s why we distilled that tremendous range of issues down to a core anchor: What are the strategies and solutions for workers? What are the key steps we must take to ensure a positive future of work for all workers, from programs to policies? And what are those win-win solutions that will ensure that workers and organizations are able to continually grow and thrive?

In fact, that’s why we held our opening reception at the Diego Rivera Detroit Industry Murals room at the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, amidst a breathtaking display of worker stories painted by the famous muralist. At the end of the day, each of us is a worker, and that kinship drives so many of the human connections that we make.

What’s Happening?

Once you spend any time in this arena, it becomes abundantly clear that the future of work is far more about today than it is tomorrow. Even in a time of low national unemployment, many workers remain disenfranchised, with limited access to the education, work opportunities, and development opportunities they need. Wage growth for many workers is anemic. And the policies and systems that determine how workers will succeed or fail must themselves be changed if all are to benefit. To explore these issues, Fulcrum was organized into four half-day segments: What’s Happening, What’s Coming, What’s Working, and What’s Next. 

But we first began with two pre-conference workshops. Human-Centered Design for Communities was skillfully guided by Virginia Hamilton, a former Regional Administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor. And I led a workshop on skills-centric initiatives from around the world, which we called the “Summit4Skills,” involving startups and initiatives (both locally and through Zoom) from the U.S., Canada, Luxembourg, and Brazil. Our third pre-conference workshop kicked off a brainstorming process with Roey Tzezana of the XPRIZE Foundation, envisioning what a “moonshot” for the future of work might look like.

Our opening reception was held that night at the Rivera Court, and the conference began the following morning with our “What’s Happening” segment. People shouldn’t be able to choose their own facts, so it’s critical to begin with shared understanding. That’s why What’s Happening was designed to give attendees a clear picture of the “state of play” in the world of work.

In What Do We Need to Solve For? The Work To Be Done, Sarita Gupta from the Ford Foundation, David Rolf, Founder and President Emeritus of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Brookings Institution’s Mark Muro were guided in an onstage conversation by Allana Akhtar of Business Insider. It’s clear that the dynamics of traditional employer and worker relationships is rapidly giving way to a far more complex and quickly-moving landscape blending traditional and non-traditional forms of work, and we need to do everything from new forms of collective worker action to new policy and processes creating more inclusive organizations.

True, leaders of organizations talk about the need for inclusion. But what does that mean in terms of actual practices? In Work & the Inclusive Organization, Axios’ Erica Pandey led an onstage discussion with WarnerMedia’s former Corporate Responsibility and Diversity & Inclusion lead Yrthya Dinzey-Flores, DTE Energy’s Diane Antishin, and Co-worker.org’s Michelle Miller. A core takeaway: While inclusion is always a work in progress, organizations must commit to a vision of inclusive hiring, development, and promotion practices with clear and specific cultural anchors, if such programs are to be effective.

In Philanthropy’s Role in the Present and Future of Work, IBM’s Guillermo Miranda, Google.org’s Andrew Dunckelman, Ford Foundation’s Jose Garcia, and Lavea Brachman of the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation were led by the City of Detroit’s Nicole Stallings Bates in a discussion about the various lenses that foundations bring in trying to create a more broadly-beneficial world of work, and the need for collaboration between all capital sources, not just philanthropies.

Breakout sessions allowed attendees to dig deeper into key issues related to What’s Working. Because the vast majority of new employment in the U.S. comes from companies less than five years old, encouraging entrepreneurship in a variety of forms is crucial to economic growth, today and tomorrow. The Entrepreneur Rising session included Village Capital’s Marissa Lowman, Global Detroit’s Millie Chu, and David Li of the Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, moderated by Chris Shipley of Sparkt, who for years led the entrepreneur-focused Demo conference. The good news: Many communities have gotten the memo that entrepreneur programs can have a profound impact on the economic health and vitality of a region. The continuing challenge: Ensuring that a broad range of entrepreneurs has access to the resources, mentoring, training - and especially capital - they need to grow their businesses. And Start.coop’s Greg Brodsky talked about what I call a “third way” between being a worker and an entrepreneur: A coop model that blends worker output with worker ownership. 

What do workers want? That’s the topic explored in a session moderated by John Irons, who has led Ford Foundation’s Future of Work(ers) initiative, and has been a marvelous collaborator in helping us to envision what Fulcrum could be. John led the conversation with Sarah Kalloch of the Good Jobs Institute, Molly Kinder of New America Foundation and Brookings’ Muro, covering the range of key issues where the traditional power dynamic between workers and employers is shifting, and the ways that dynamic can be re-balanced.

As we will need to continually adapt to new work requirements and opportunities, the future of work is inextricably tied to the future of learning. In Reimagining Learning, an eclectic group of thinkers on the ways that education can be reshaped and turned into a lifelong experience. The discussion included Logan School headmaster Markus Hunt, Localized Learning board member Mohannad El-Khairy, Pluralsight One’s Lindsey Kneuven, and moderator Angela Jackson of New Profit. And in a separate session, Dr. Tonya Matthews of Wayne State University explored a range of strategies designed for worker inclusion and for long-term success in organizations.

What’s Coming?

As the event shifted to focus on What’s Coming, talk turned to visions of the future of work. In breakout sessions, serial (and sometimes parallel) entrepreneur Peter Hirshberg of Lighthouse.one and Anika Goss from Detroit Future City talked about models for envisioning the Future of Communities. Giselle Mota, ADP’s lead for the future of work, and NetHope’s Leila Toplic, the non-profit consortium’s Lead for Emerging Technologies, talked about the impacts and opportunities that will come at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and the future of work.

Back in the main session room, Nick Davis, Faculty Chair for Corporate Innovation for the international learning company Singularity University (where I serve as the Chair for the Future of Work), painted a breathtaking vision of the ways in which “exponential technologies” are reshaping industries, organizations, and lives. Sciehce fiction-class advances in technologies ranging from autonomous vehicles to personal drones - to autonomous personal drones - mean tremendous potential opportunity for Detroit and the region to leverage its traditional expertise in transportation. But if the learnings from the past are any indication, it’s critical that no region becomes a monoculture economy. Resilience only comes from broad diversification of the industries on which any region is dependent.

Inevitably, all discussions about the future of work eventually become focused on policy. Postmates’ Vikrum Aiyer, Thumbtack’s Kellyn Blossom, PolicyLink’s Abby Langston, and Jobs to Move America’s Madeline Janis were led in a policy discussion by Entangled Solutions’ Kristin Sharp, a former staffer for Senator Mark Warner. Recent bills like California’s AB5 offer examples of attempts to establish guidelines for reclassifying workers, but illustrate the complications of trying to factor for new forms of non-traditional work in ways that don’t negatively impact existing forms of non-traditional work.

When we design events, we know the goal is to move both hearts and minds, so we include what we call “surprise & delight” sessions, led by phenomenal speakers who can bring a new lens on our world and our lives. That’s a role that was amply filled by Oshoke Pamela Abalu and Chinedu Echeruo of Love & Magic Company, who gave a talk on “the benevolent corporation” - organizations dedicated to the lived experiences of their customers and their workers. Several inspired attendees committed right after the session to make their companies more benevolent.

Another delightful moment came that evening, when we invited attendees to a one-hour screening of the PBS Roadtrip Nation series, “Rerouting,” which featured Detroit community catalyst Bernita Bradley. After the screening, I had the pleasure of doing a brief onstage interview with Bernita, whom I first met when I helped to host the first episode of the TV series. Bernita’s story, and those of her two fellow Roadtrippers, is one of continual reinvention, an inspirational skillset that an increasing number of people will need to learn.

What's Working?

What kinds of programs can we point to that are moving the needle on creating broader prosperity, and what has helped various communities to create thriving work ecosystems?

The second day of the conference began with my brief recap of the learnings from day one, then a brief keynote talk by Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, and a Detroit resident. He highlighted work by tech companies to enable workers to continually hone their technical skills, in a world where technology will inevitably infuse an increasing amount of work.

What can we learn from the work in Detroit and the region? That’s the question explored by John Gallagher of Detroit Free Press, as he led an onstage discussion with Shinola’s then-CEO Tom Lewand, TechTown’s Ned Staebler, Nicole Sherard-Freeman from the City of Detroit, and Portia Roberson of local non-profit Focus:HOPE. They discussed the ways in which increased collaboration between businesses, non-profits, investors, foundations, and community organizations has helped to revitalize Detroit’s downtown and beyond. But as in so many communities, there is still much work to be done, especially to bring work into urban and rural communities to ensure that prosperity becomes more widely distributed.

That’s also the focus of similar programs across the country, as explored in Programs That Work: Community-Based Initiatives. Clarinda Barnett-Harrison of Detroit Regional Work Economy provided local examples, while Nick Smoot of Idaho-based Innovation Collective and Matt Dunne of New Hampshire-based Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) mentioned cities ranging from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to Red Wing, Minnesota. They were guided by moderator Chris Shipley to highlight the ways in which their programs were leveraging entrepreneurship, worker training, and employer engagement.

In a range of situations, one of the approaches that is working is a focus on human skills, and the ways in which we can learn, demonstrate, and develop our ability to solve problems. In the breakout session Skills For the Future of Work, Canadian entrepreneurs Sean Hinton of SkyHive and Hamoon Ekhtiari of FutureFit.ai, American Josh Painter of Degreed.com, Jessica Brown of the Australian firm Faethm.ai, and Michelle Weise of the Boston-based Strada Institute for the Future of Work were led by Muriel Clauson of Anthill.ai to explore the ways that technology and training programs are helping people to more rapidly gain the necessary skills to solve the problems of today and tomorrow. 

As author John O’Duinn and lecturer April Rinne discussed in their session, another strategy that is working for communities across the country is to prepare themselves to serve as hubs for distributed work. Rather than offering massive tax incentives to encourage employers to bring large-scale employment to a region, communities can determine the skillsets they are best prepared to offer, and work with employers to help remote workers remain in place.

Many programs focus on helping workers inevitably and appropriately focus on specific populations. Susanne Bruyere of Cornell University offered a range of strategies for programs designed to help differently-abled workers, while Sophie Wade of Flexcel Network and JobsFirstNYC CEO Marjorie Parker talked about programs for helping youth to have the preparation and access they need.

What’s Next?

The final segment of Fulcrum focused on the process of collaboration. Any gathering that brings together such a broad range of stakeholders needs to help attendees work together to talk about the work going forward. I had the pleasure of interviewing State Representative Christine Greig on some of the most important issues she felt were critical for the region, and of course we discussed the need for a constantly-adaptive workforce, and the kinds of policies and collaboration that increase access to education and work opportunities. 

If there is any arena where innovation is needed, it’s in the ways that workers will increase their collective voice, and work together to promote the needs of workers. Andrea Dehlendorf of United For Respect, Brendan Sexton of the Independent Drivers Union, Nafisah Ula of Jobs With Justice, and Adrian Haro of The Workers Lab joined a lively onstage discussion moderated by Susan McPherson of McPherson Strategies. We continued that discussion with a workshop that involved all of the conference attendees, leveraging their collective wisdom for new ways that workers can be empowered, today and tomorrow.

We find that conference attendees always have certain “burning questions” that are still unanswered at the end of an event, so we concluded with what we call a Town Hall Meeting, an open-mike discussion coalescing around the core issues that remain, and ideas for ways to collaborate going forward.

What became clear to all is that, for so many initiatives related to the future of work, the main deliverable isn’t an answer: It’s a process, an inclusive approach that encourages a broad range of stakeholders to continually work together to prioritize their actions and their resources. No matter what your community or organization is, this needs to be the core framing for our thinking: We need to work together to agree where to place the lever, and align our actions so we can all help to create a positive future of work.

• Gary A. Bolles, San Francisco, Nov. 30, 2019