Xperienceships Thought Leadership Series: David Price OBE on the Future of Education & Career Exploration

David Price OBE is a global thought leader, learning futurist and author, specialising in how organisations learn, innovate and make themselves fit for the future. He trains, learns alongside and champions the work of future-focused educators, engaging audiences around the world- in business, education and the public sector. We were privileged to be able to ask David about his own career path, his predictions for the future of career exploration and the idea of a "portfolio" career - and what it means to educators right now, in 2020.

David’s new book, The Power of Us: How We Connect, Act, and Innovate Together, goes behind the scenes of some of the world’s most innovative organisations harnessing the power of collaboration and diverse thinking to effect real change – and demonstrates what we can learn from them. It’s an urgent call for leaders, teams and individuals to challenge the status quo, and so we wanted to talk to David about the status quo in our field: career exploration - and how we can all be part of that call for disruption and improvement. You can read the full interview below or watch a 4 minute clip of the interview below.

Xperienceships: We're going to be talking about career exploration. We'd like to ask you what your first job was, David.

David: My first job was in the civil service. There was a huge employer, which is the government's civil service, in the northeast of England. So this is in the 70s, and believe it or not, then there was pretty much full employment. I left school at 16 - because I hated school, so I couldn't wait to get out. It was a question of what kind of a job you got. And there were essentially two big alternatives in northeast England. One was working in the shipyards. One was working down the mine so neither of those was ever going to happen. The civil service employed about 15,000 people in this huge office, it was Kafkaesque. It was the most mindless, boring job I've ever done in my life, except I was really bad at it. So I couldn't find any enjoyment at all. I just had no interest. And one day I just stood up and told the boss I was leaving the following week. And he said, and I swear to God, this is true. He said, “But what about your pension?” - I'm 17: I didn't care! I said, I'm going to become a professional musician, and he just burst out laughing. But I knew that working in that kind of an office environment was not for me. So that was my first job. I'm certainly not a role model for a studious employee.

X: So I think I really know the answer to this question, but how well did your formal studies prepare you for the job that you do today?

D: I didn't feel like it did at all. Certainly not to be a professional musician, because the way music was taught then, in schools and still kind of is to a large extent, it was horrific. You know, I wanted to be a pop musician. So there was no help there. But after I'd done that for about 15 years, and was now in my late 20s, I thought this is not really a job for a grown up, you know, traveling around. I was working a lot in Spain; I would do summer seasons in Ibiza and then just get jobs with any kind of bands that I could during the winter. And then I thought no. A friend of mine said, have you ever thought of going back to college? In truth I hadn't. But I just happened to pick the right kind of course. And and so that certainly prepared me because I ended up it was a creative arts in the community type of course. 

We've got this newspaper here, The Guardian, which is, you know, the kind of newspaper everybody who wants to work in the arts looks at their jobs, but a friend of mine just said: no one ever gets the job that's advertised in The Guardian. And lo and behold, I did and I got that job the day after I graduated from college. So my school career was totally useless. But going to college, especially as a mature student, was the best thing I ever did, man. 

X: Obviously, the context that we're in right now within education is explored in your new book, The Power of Us. How is people powered innovation happening right now in education from what you've seen?

D: The book's been the result of about three years of looking at organizations around the world. I wanted to look at really innovative organizations to see what kind of learning culture they build because I think what's really important now for young people is that they think very differently to my generation. You know, my father used to say to me, just get the job that pays the most because you're gonna hate work. So you may as well get the job that pays you the best. And what we're seeing now, with the millennials and the generations that have followed, is that they've got much loftier ambitions, they are less motivated by money and more motivated by the mindset of your organization, its ethical and social stance. 

I think it's important to stress that there are three kinds of ways that people-powered innovation manifests itself. One is just people who advocate for new services that are advocating for change. A wave of what I called the new activism is happening all around the world. We're seeing it with Black Lives Matter, the MeToo movement. It’s going beyond the normal people who get involved in activism; because it's highly networked, so is much, much more effective than it used to be. 

The other form is when people take existing products and kind of hack them. They start tinkering with them so that they better meet their needs. And that's often how a lot of people get started. In the book, I've got a case study of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company. Yvon Chouinard who set it up was essentially just a rock climber, and the equipment that he was getting didn't work well enough for him. So he started tinkering with that. And pretty soon his friend said, “That's really good, could you make me some?” And so he built it up from that. 

The third type and and it's arguable whether anything's ever created from scratch, but there are some people who have a great new idea and then they put it forward. 

What was exciting for me about the timing of the book was that we've always had people who invented things, people who need things, but they've never been able to organize themselves so that they could produce this stuff at scale. And COVID in a sense, proved that that time has arrived. We had a thing called scrub hubs: a network of volunteers, people who sew medical garments, in their thousands, were collaborating across the country. We had Facebook groups who were making sure that people who were sheltering were fed. So there was this outpouring of what I call ingenuity. Users of products and services are not willing any more just to be consulted. They don't want what we've always thought of as market research. They're not happy with that - they want to be in there, creating new products and services. I think most organizations haven't realized that. And maybe we'll talk in a minute about how education is missing a trick in that. 

What I wanted to get across in the book is that there's a different kind of mindset that I call the user innovator mindset, which takes a different stance on the whole business of creativity and innovation. And so you can do that internally, if you can understand what it is to be inside the head of a user, in your organization, you will be a more creative and more effective organization.

X: You talked about the user innovator mindset in relation to the producer mindset. Could you explain a little bit more about what they mean and then what you think might be more helpful to students as they're looking at career exploration?

D: How this applies to young people and career exploration is that they need to adopt that user innovator mindset, because that is what will take them to a place perhaps that they never thought they could either be in or be effective in.

So the user looks at a new product or maybe a service and they think, well, what if we, what if we change that? What if we did that? The producer mindset and bear in mind, most organizations, certainly almost all boards of organizations are dominated by the producer mindset - they just think, where's the market for this? They can't be dealing with individual production lines, they've got to think of this at scale. The user innovator isn't isn't concerned with a particularly polished final product. There's a beautiful Indian term for this called jugaad innovation. Basically it means good enough. So, you know, the skateboard was a classic example of user innovative thinking. Basically a pair of roller skates, stuck onto a chopped down surfboard. And lo and behold, the skateboard was invented. And it was good enough. It was only when the producers got involved that it became this slick and, and highly professional lifestyle product. 

That's where I think producers get things wrong, that they don't understand that you need to have the loyalty of that founding community. If you want to have a sustainable organization. So Billabong, who started off as a couple of surfers who started making surfboards, very soon became this big, almost faceless corporation that was essentially selling a lifestyle. All the surfers said: we don't buy that philosophy. So we're going to go back to getting our boards from individuals and people who make that stuff. 

So how does this apply to education? What I think it means is people who are looking for talent, corporations, organizations, they need to think about what how does this appear from the user perspective, the person who may want to come along and either buy our product or make use of our services, and for young people who are looking at finding a career, I think that they will look at the values and ethics of an organization before they want to join them. 

I say to young people: if you're lucky enough to find an organization that places a high value on learning and development within the organization, then that's the kind of place that you want to be. Not perks, you know, pool tables and free snacks, that's not important anymore. What people are after is: are they going to develop? Are they making daily progress in meaningful work? Are they doing work that matters? So that's the difference between the user mindset and the producer mindset. I'm not saying one's better than the other, you need to have both. 

In education, we're starting to see this if you take something like big picture learning: they structure the working week so that students will have two days a week on a kind of internship with a local employer, or someone who maybe just a hobbyist is who's doing something that they think is interesting. And so they build the learning and the projects that they do around that. 

But the core is trying something different, seeing if it works for you, and if it doesn't, move on, that’s how you find your element. I was lucky. I knew from the age of about 16, that I wanted to be a professional musician, but I see lots and lots of young people and even mature adults who say, I've never really found the thing that I was really passionate about, and I say: “how many different experiences did you give yourself?” Often they haven't really done that. 

X: Exploration, testing and prototyping of careers is at the heart of what Xperienceships wants to do with younger kids as well. it's about making sure your quality of life and the years that you've spent at work feel worthwhile.

D: I think we're starting to see especially in the new tech industries, people bringing a different mindset to this. They’re saying if we want to get the best talent, then we need to be adaptable, we need to be flexible. There's a lot of organizations now they're throwing the job description in the bin. They realized that they're creating this very rigid hierarchical structure and if you have a job which is tightly defined, you're actually not going to get the best out of people, how are you ever going to find out if you're going to be good at something else within that organization, if you never get a chance to do that? Facebook used to say, for 11 out of every 12 months that you work for us. For the other month, you can do someone else's job, you can just try your hand at something else. Brewdog, a Scottish craft brewery that are featured in the book, have absolutely flexible job descriptions, and they talk about “being happy being scrappy”. 

X: Could you mention some of the trends in education you’ve seen now, in response to these important changes in the working world, in business and technology? What is exciting and gives you hope that we do more of it?

D: What we’re starting to see, is more tech entrepreneurs who’ve reached a certain age and start to look around at schools for their own kids. They are now starting to create their own schools, with a start-up mindset, which has the user innovator mindset at its core. I get asked a lot by parents: what kind of school should I send my kids to? Can you recommend any? And in the UK at least, the traditional way that we judge if a school is good, is by its exam results. I know it’s a sensitive time around exam results, and a lot of kids have worked so hard around the world to not even get to take the exams, but in reality, employers don’t ever look at your exam results. One you’re in an organization, what they look for are qualities like character, perseverance and collaboration. I saw this all the time in the entertainment industry. When you’ve got 5 guitarists who are all technically brilliant, you choose the one who is the easiest to get along with. The perception that a lot of us have around education - that you’ve got to get the best possible qualifications - doesn’t hold up anymore.

Moreover, the other big trend we’re seeing, especially with the looming recession following COVID, is that more people are starting their own businesses - the artisanal economy. Anyone who has been on websites like Etsy or Patreon will know what that looks like: the beauty is that now there is a market for whatever you do. Somewhere in the world, someone is willing to buy it and support what you do, you just have to find them. And that’s the key skill.

So all of the traditional skills that employers used to value, in a freelance world, all that goes out of the window, and your network becomes your strongest skill of all. How effective are you at building a network?

In the book, I’ve interviewed lots of young future problem solvers: the thing they all have in common is they are incredibly well-networked, all around the world. That’s an important skill to have, as is the ability to say, “I don’t know if I can do this, but let’s give it a go: what’s the worst that can happen?”

We’re in an educational world, sadly, where, failure isn’t tolerated. So many schools are just not preparing our young people for the world of work as it now is, and as it will be in the future. 

X: We’re very interested in encouraging students to experience a taster of employment through project-based learning, through challenges set by employers. What could be more of the future for this, how do you see links between schools and employers deepening in the COVID context?

D: That’s the $64,000 dollar question. The reality is, we don’t know what’s going to happen after COVID. There is one school of thought that says this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. For the first time, people are now questioning the idea of a standardized assessment structure in schools. No one - even 6 months ago - would have dreamed that was possible. You know, I personally think that standardized testing has been the scourge of education for 30-40 years now. But people are saying, actually in COVID we didn’t take tests, and the sky didn’t fall in, our students still learned things. There are so many things up for grabs.

The world of work has already changed. When Jack Dorsey of Twitter, said no-one ever needs to come into our office again, if they don’t want to: that is being replicated widely. And we don’t know the unintended consequences of this. Will we still have big cities? If you don’t need to be in an office, what will it mean doing internships or experiential work if it’s all done via screen? However, COVID will pass, we will start to be in a room together again - thank god! - and when that happens, we need to take the opportunity to bring the user-innovators into education. Who do I mean by that? I mean the students themselves.

I work with some fantastic schools who have said to the students, “how has it been for you? What’s worked during online delivery? What’s not worked, what should we keep?” But it isn’t just students. What schools tend to do, is ask people to do things for the school. They don’t say to organizations, “what can we do for you”? Radical schools know that the only way they’re going to build experiences for their students is to get them out into the community to DO things. Since COVID, we've seen students using 3-D printers to make face shields and PPE all around the world. There are students playing a game called Foldit, it’s a video game that is working through computer simulations of the proteins that are created by the coronavirus. I mean: that’s really important work...why shouldn’t that be part of your learning experience? ?

David's new book, The Power of Us: How We Connect, Act, and Innovate Together is out on August 28th and available to pre-order now.