The Future of Learning and Working

There are not many combinations which are more complex, connected and important as work and learning. They impact on happiness and prosperity, one person and all, today and the future. 

I’ve been lucky enough to be at ASU GSV in San Diego working with the team at Navitas Ventures. My three days were a wonderful overload of ideas, data, people, technology, challenges and opportunities. My unfairly brief summary is:

1. Learning will become even more important over the next twenty years.
2. People, including teachers, administrators, technologists and others are working very hard and making great progress. 
3. The progress isn’t fast enough, scaleable enough or fair enough. 

I’m going to tell the story of my time at ASU GSV, highlight the points that got me thinking and then try and pull it all together at the end… stay with me. 

Sunday 

3pm: SFO Airport

Standing in line for the plane from SF to SD I saw an old colleague of mine Robby Peters. He has built a career, portfolio and business around HR tech. He was working hard and the breadth of what he was working on was eye opening. HR as we all know, but rarely think about, stands for human resources, which when you step back from it feels as cold as it sounds — humans as resources.  

Many companies still have this as a title while some have moved away to monikers like talent or people. People are critical to business but business is still business. If you can’t make money you can’t pay salaries. 

Point: We are still learning and constantly evolving around what it means for people to work and what the work of people is. 

Monday 

7am: Briefing with Tim Prail, head of Navitas Ventures.

Navitas is a big education company that has setup a Ventures arm and supported a education focused accelerator. The goal of both is to increase the exposure of the company to new ideas, technologies and business models. As a tertiary education focused company, they recognize that whilst the exact nature and timing of change is impossible to predict, the effects of the changes will be impossible to ignore. 

Point: If you’re not participating, you’re going backwards. 

1pm: EdTech Landscape Report

Navitas Ventures generated and published a third report on the education technology landscape. They hosted a session to share some of the insights. Despite taking over the next door room, it was still so popular that we had to tell people to come back at the next session. Overall we ran four of these, and each one was full. 

The fact that the landscape report didn’t exist three years ago and the level of interest in it now was amazing. 

Point: Part of participating in fast change is acknowledging a need for deep, broad and fresh eyed view of an industry you may have worked in for your whole life. All assumptions should be challenged. Gather data. Start from scratch. 

2pm: Girls Into Tech

I’ve been aware of the lack of women in tech and supportive of efforts to be make it more balanced. I’m also a dad of two young girls so this is a real issue for me. My girls may not end up doing anything tech related at all but it’s important for me that it’s a real choice with plenty of exposure. (Indeed looking now it seems Lucy will be an artist and Grace will be either an actress or extreme sports star.)

The panel shared stories about technology, programs, role models and other initiatives which are all making progress in this area. It’s clear that this work is only the start and that the affects of bias take decades and even generations to even get close to parity of opportunity let alone outcome. 

Point: The work is important and will hopefully increase, but the outcomes will take time. 

4pm: Linkedin Mixer

First of all, the view. Wow. After that, I met a recently hired Linkedin team member and he told me about how he is working in the junction between learning and jobs. He also told me about how he was enjoying working there and was struck by how seriously the company takes values and culture. 

It was interesting to see all these forces at work. Companies, offering opportunities to learn and get work externally and internally being a company that needs to learn, give people work and grow. 

Point: There is an opportunity for people and companies to lead by example. It’s never easy but always worth it. 

5.30pm: Lauren from Accel

In the line for the dinner talks I met Lauren who is head of talent at Accel venture capital firm. One of my favorite parts of good events is meeting people serendipitously. We had a great chat over a drink and then in the big ballroom about the value add of venture capital companies, the challenges of being a founder in a fast growing company, the war of talent and the exposure of the minsogynst culture of the world and Silicon Valley. 

Lauren had seen so much, was doing so much and, I’m certainly, will go on to do so much more. Her willingness to share real insights, brutal truths, big challenges and what’s coming next was completely natural and open. 

Point: No point. She was just impressive on many levels and when you get out there, say hello and ask questions you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what you experience. 

6pm: George W Bush 

I wasn’t sure why he was talking at an education focused event but a prior President of the USA is always a draw card, and I gladly accepted the offer. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I certainly went in with an assumption of a not very articulate, conservative politician, son of another President. 

I was very pleasantly surprised. Whilst he’s not President anymore and a one hour fire side chat does not provide a complete picture of someone, he came across as humble, authentic, highly articulate and reasonable. 

He was asked his biggest regret and he immediately replied ‘Immigration, we didn’t do enough.” My defensiveness assumed he meant tougher immigration, but he said he was very pro. “Who do you think is tarring a road in 104 degree heat in Texas? It aint an American? It certainly aint someone from Harvard.” (Carlos Watson, the interviewer, went to Harvard as did GWB). “We need to provide them a path to Citizenship.” “I was at a citizenship ceremony a few months back for two marines. They are willing to give up their lives for this country, they sure as hell should be able to become a part of it.” 

He was asked if he saw the financial crisis coming. “Nope, we certainly didn’t see it coming or had any idea how bad it would be.” He told us that Bernake from the Federal Reserve said they either had to bail out the banks or there would be a depression. He said he campaigned on the principle of ‘Companies must pay the price of their own problems.” He decided to avoid the depression but lamented that all efforts to reform the financial industry were blocked by lobbyists. 

Point: Don’t believe everything you read but do believe that while change typically comes from the grassroots up, in the end, the system has to change too.

Tuesday

8am: Ethan from StudyTree

Being listed as an investor in the program significantly, and artificially, inflates your popularity (and with it often your ego). I had a number of entrepreneurs reach out to me but only one really hustled hard, with a nice balance of persistence and politeness. He ended up coming to my hotel to tell me about his business over breakfast. I gave him a bunch of feedback and hopefully it was useful. 

What he did well (partly) was to tell me his trying to solve a big problem. Roughly 40% of college students never graduate. Wow. Big number. The reason it was only partly well told was that percentages are very hard to really feel. Together we worked on making it more impactful, converting it into roughly 4.7 million students a year and based on $30k average student debt that’s $141B a year. Wow. We just went from ‘that sucks’ to ‘I can’t believe that, something has to be done’.

These numbers hammer home one of the themes of ASU GSV: The momentum that pushes many young adults into college is not good for them or society. This is and should be the topic of multiple books and dozens of vigorous debates, so I’m insulting it’s importance with a blog post. That being said, before the conference it was an issue I felt only instinctively. Now I have a much more visceral sense of its scale, complexity and impact. My guess is that most people who are not involved in tertiary education or don’t have kids in or approaching college won’t have this sense and it’s worth considering. 

Hundreds of years of incremental improvement in education and indeed general prosperity of society have created this. Some times systems need revolutions to adjust for long term evolution as per Antifragile. College is absolutely a great institution and has a critical role to play in education, but it can’t be the only answer. Here is an incomplete list of converging storms: 

• The diversity of work the world needs done and the desire of people to do it,
• The impact of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and augmented reality (AR), 
• The growing middle class of developing nations,
• The growing life expectancy of most countries,
• An increasingly VUCA world. 

Point: Again, these are massive issues way too complicated to comprehend or model. So what do you do?

• Don’t stand still,
• try new things,
• get diverse view points,
• be open minded.

This applies to you as an individual, employee, manager, leader, entrepreneur, parent, teacher. Participate. Now. 

2pm: MR in the classroom with Microsoft

I saw a demonstration of some classroom mixed reality technology from a Microsoft Partner. They showed dinosaurs in the room and the kids reaction. It still felt early, though it's clearly coming and the impact will be big. Read the book Ready Player One for some insights, but mostly for fun.

Point: I like playing with geeky gadgets, but these gadgets will become normal in education five years, like ipads are now (in developed markets)

5pm: Australian Meetup

Austrade and Navitas through a shindig including Aussie beer and lamb cutlets. It was well attended and I knew a bunch of the companies.

Point: Like the Olympics, Australia has crazy high performance in Education Technology on a per-capita basis.

7pm: People Works

Robby (from the line at the airport) invited me to a dinner for PeopleTech Partners. I met a number of founders building HR tech businesses. OK, so HR is an outdated, cold term replaced normally by people or talent. This is yet another revolution that we are in the midst of and will take a generation to change.

Some of the interesting products:

1. Balloonr: Removing the bias from decision making like during recruiting. A problem that has existed for years, but the market is now ready for and needs.
2. Bravely: Allowing your team to get coaching on work, careers, issues, etc.

Bonus: L&D Report

This came from one of the sessions about the future of work:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPyCx4MywYT7spqi5yaNDOi8kO7hmCLg/view

Education is the silver bullet. It's complicated, entrenched and hard to pin down. We are in the midst of the biggest change ever and that is good. It will take time and the efforts of many small groups. I can't wait.

It was a huge event and I was glad I went. Big thanks to Tim and the team at Navitas for inviting me.