How to future-proof your career | Jacob Morgan | TEDxAcademy

After graduating from college, Jacob Morgan got a job in the corporate world. When his dreams were belittled, he quit. That was the last "job" he ever had. Since then, he has been passionate about the future of work and designing great employee experiences. In this talk, Jacob shares three counterintuitive strategies for how anyone can future-proof their career whether they are a full-time employee or an entrepreneur.

Today, Jacob is a best-selling author, speaker and futurist who explores how the world of work is changing. His ideas on the future of work have earned him audiences with senior executives around the world. His work has also been endorsed by the President of Mexico and the CEOs of T-Mobile, SAP, Cisco, Nestle, Best Buy, Schneider Electric, KPMG, and many others.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I was cheated,

lied to,

betrayed.

All of this happened
within just six months

of being in a relationship.

(Laughter)

Naturally, I did what any rational
person would do,

and I decided it was time
to end the relationship.

So I waited until the right moment,

I planned,

and finally, I handed in
my resignation letter.

Now, I'm not special.

There are millions of people
around the world every single day

who feel this way

about the managers and the organizations

that they work for.

In fact, right now,

if you were to look up the word
"employee" in the dictionary,

you would find that synonyms
for the word "employee"

include cog, servant and slave.

If you look up the word
"manager" in the dictionary,

(Laughter)

you find that synonyms

include slave driver, boss,

and my favorite one, zookeeper.

(Laughter)

But it gets better.

If you look up the word
"work" in the dictionary,

(Laughter)

synonyms include daily grind,
drudgery and struggle.

So if you put these three things together,

we are all cogs

(Laughter)

working for a zookeeper

as we go about our daily drudgery.

Wow!

Work sucks!

(Laughter)

And this is literally
how we have built our organizations

over the last 50, 100 and 150 years -

on top of these outdated ways
of thinking about work.

And it's no wonder
that so many people around the world

don't like their jobs or their careers.

It's literally ingrained in our culture.

It's in our society.

It's how we even talk about work.

Now, I was never a good student.

In fact, for the majority of my life,

I was a rather terrible student.

The only two subjects
I seemed to be any good at

were drama and physical education.

(Laughter)

But when I got to university, I realized

that this was my last opportunity
to do something in school.

And if I ever wanted to get a good job,

that I really need
to perform well in university.

So I studied really hard.

I graduated with honors

with a dual degree
in economics and psychology.

I had these big crazy dreams

of one day becoming the CMO
of an organization like Coca-Cola.

My first job out of college -

the one where I felt
so lied and betrayed to -

during the interview process,

I was told that I would be meeting
with executives and entrepreneurs,

traveling across the country

and doing all sorts of meaningful
and impactful work.

A couple of months into my job,

I'm stuck doing data entry,

cold calling,

PowerPoint presentations.

Combine that with
a three-hour daily commute

in bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic.

That was my life.

And I'll never forget this.

One day, the CEO comes
out of his beautiful corner office,

and he says, "Jacob come over here!

I have something
really important for you."

And I got excited.

I thought, "This is it,
this is the moment.

Something amazing is going to happen."

And so I run over to him,
and I say, "Yes, what is it?"

And he puts his hand into his pocket,
and he takes out his wallet.

And from his wallet, he gives me
a crisp, clean 10-dollar bill,

slaps it right in my hand,

and says, "I'm late for a meeting.

I need you to go to Starbucks
and get me a cup of coffee.

(Laughter)

And get something for yourself as well."

"What? Are you out of your damn mind?

This is why I worked so hard in school,
is to get you a cup of coffee?

Get your own stupid cup of coffee!"

This is what I thought on the inside.

(Laughter)

On the outside, I said,

"Of course, I would love
to get you that cup of coffee."

(Laughter)

Of course, I've been dreaming
of getting you coffee.

(Applause)

And that was one
of the last full-time jobs

I've had working for anybody else.

And that was around 10 years ago.

And looking back,

I suppose I should be
very thankful to that executive

and to that cup of coffee

because it taught me
a very important lesson:

There is no such thing as job security.

In fact, the only security that can exist

is the one that you create for yourself.

Today's world that we live in,

work is life and life is work.

The two things are blending;
they're becoming one.

And it's why I find it
so fascinating sometimes

when I have conversations with people
and I say, "How are you?"

And they'll say, "Well,
my personal life is going great,

but my work life is terrible."

But consider that you spend

almost as much time
on planet Earth working

as you do living.

And if the work side
of your life isn't going well,

chances are your life in general
is not going well.

So over the last 10 years,
I discovered three strategies

that allowed me to shape my work

and, as a result, to create
a better personal life for myself.

First is you cannot rely on educational
institutions or on companies

to teach you everything you need to know

about personal
or professional development.

You have to become a perpetual learner.

You must learn how to learn.

This is perhaps the most important skill
that you can possess,

and it's taking control
over what that looks like.

My family is from the Republic of Georgia.

Now, usually when I say Georgia,

people think of "Hey, y'all,
I'm from the South" kind of Georgia,

in the United States,

but I'm talking about

the "Hello, Mother Russia"
kind of Georgia, right?

It's a very different part of the world.

In fact, my last name,
my original last name, isn't even Morgan.

It's Mamishashvili.

Try saying that three times fast.

And my family came
from the Republic of Georgia

in the '80s as refugees,

and they went from the Republic of Georgia

to Italy, to Australia,

to finally ending up in the United States.

Now, as refugees,
when they came to America,

they knew nothing and they had nothing.

My dad learned how to speak English
by watching a popular talk show:

"The Johnny Carson Show,"

with an English to Russian
translation dictionary

so that he could understand the words
that Johnny Carson was saying.

That is the ultimate perpetual learner.

And this is before the days of Google.

This is before we had access

to all of these amazing tools
and resources at our disposal.

But being a perpetual learner also means
paying attention to the tangential.

Now, how many of you had this happen?

You're in conversation with somebody,

and at some point during the conversation,

the other person says,
"I am so heads down."

In fact, I'm willing to bet

that most people in this room
have even said, "I'm so heads down."

But the problem with saying
that you're so heads down

is that you miss everything else
that's happening in the world.

It's no longer good enough
to be heads down.

You need to be heads up,

you need to be heads side to side,

and you even need to be heads behind you.

You need to be aware of how your skills
and abilities can be applied,

not just to what's right in front of you

but to things that are
a little bit on the side.

Be a perpetual learner;

pay attention to the tangential.

The second thing that I learned

is that you have to fake it
till you make it.

(Laughter)

After my first job out of college,

my whole goal in life simply became

"How can I make a living

without having to work
for anybody else ever again?"

And at the time,

I was finding all sorts of jobs online
on websites like Craigslist.

I wrote articles for $15 an article.

I did whatever I could
to try to make money.

The reality of the situation
was that I was a struggling young kid

without making much money.

But what I told myself

was that I was this young entrepreneur

building a life for himself
that he truly wanted to live.

And I would repeat that phrase
over and over, every single day,

all the time, even to this day.

What you believe
and what you tell yourself

matters.

Because it will guide your behaviors,
it will guide your actions,

and it will guide how you feel
about yourself.

I remember one time I was actually
on a stage much like this one,

and I was behind the stage
getting ready to come on,

and the music was playing,
the lights were beaming,

and from behind the stage,
the announcer says,

"And now, please welcome
to the stage Jacob Morgan!"

And people were clapping, and I came out;

I looked at everybody,

and I thought, "Am I naked?

(Laughter)

Am I wearing any pants?"

I had this impostor syndrome moment

that 70% of people around the world
at some point experience.

To be honest, I don't know
how I made it through my talk,

but I thought I had given
such a terrible performance

that my career was over.

I thought nobody's going to want
to hire me after this.

And so I just wanted to get offstage,

to not see anybody,
to not talk to anybody -

to just go home.

And as I was getting ready
to walk off the stage,

these executives were lining up
to come speak with me,

to shake my hand, to ask me for feedback,

to tell me that they enjoyed my talk.

It was at that moment that I realized

"I am wearing pants"

and that I do belong.

In my situation though,

it wasn't just the imaginary voices
in my head I had that were telling me

I was no good.

I had real voices from real people
telling me I was no good.

These are people -
today we call them online trolls.

They would leave
angry comments on my website,

create fake Twitter accounts about me.

They would message my wife,
then girlfriend,

telling her to break up with me
because I was bad for her career.

You can imagine how angry they are now
that we're actually married.

(Laughter)

And for months,

I would let these people make me feel bad,

and for months after that,

I would argue and fight
and debate with all of them.

And then finally, I realized
nobody knows who these people are.

And perhaps, more importantly,

nobody cares.

Whether you are dealing
with imaginary voices in your head

telling you that you're no good

or real voices

that are telling you you're no good,

you have to remember to be optimistic.

You're a beast!

What you tell yourself matters.

It will guide your behaviors,

your actions

and how you feel.

And you can think of yourself

as the struggling young kid
without any money,

or you can think of yourself

as the young entrepreneur

wanting to build a life for themselves
that they truly want to live.

It's a choice.

It's how you think.

Fake it till you make it.

The last thing that I learned
is perhaps the most controversial,

and that is don't follow your passion.

Bring your passion with you.

Follow your passion is one
of the biggest business platitudes

we keep hearing about.

We're always told to follow our passions.

But the problem with that

is, first, it assumes that passion
lives outside of you

and that you need to go chase it.

Second, it assumes that passion
is one static thing, right?

"Here's your passion. Go get it!"

But as you grow,

as you experience different things,

as you become good at different things,

your passion is going to change.

And lastly, most of us
can't even figure out our passion

before we choose what to pursue.

I was never passionate
about the future of work

or employee experience or speaking
or doing any of the stuff that I'm doing.

But as I got involved
with doing these things,

I noticed that people
would start to share my ideas.

That opportunities
would start to unlock for me.

And then I became passionate
about what it is that I'm doing.

I learned to focus on the little things

that allowed me to see the big picture
of what I was trying to create.

It reminds me a lot of a story about a man
who went to visit a construction site.

And on the construction site,
he sees three people working.

And he goes up to the first person,
and he says, "What do you do?"

And the person says,
"I am laying bricks."

And he goes up to the second person,
and he says, "What are you doing?"

And the person says,
"I'm building a wall."

And he goes up to the third person,

and as he's walking
up to the third person,

he hears him singing a tune.

(Humming)

He goes over to him and says,

"My goodness! What do you do?"

And the person stops their work,

wipes their brow, takes off their hat,
looks up at the sky and says,

"I'm building a cathedral!"

Everyone is passionate about something.

Isn't it better to live your life

bringing that passion with you
to everything that you do

instead of chasing it?

In a world where everybody is told
to follow their passion,

you can instead stand out
by bringing yours.

If you can be a perpetual learner,

if you can fake it till you make it

and if you don't follow your passion -
you bring it with you -

then you will take more control
over your work life,

and as a result,

you will build a life for yourself
that you truly want to live.

And if this struggling young kid
without any money was able to do it,

then so can you.

Thank you.

(Applause)