Bob Johansen on the officeverse, augmented intelligence, thinking future-back, and people as filters

“It’s more than the Great Resignation, it’s more than the Great Reset, it’s more than Quiet Quitting, this is all about reimagining. It’s an opportunity to create something better, to be better than we were before.”

– Bob Johansen

About Bob Johansen

Bob is Distinguished Fellow and former CEO at the Institute for the Future. He has worked as a professional futurist for nearly 50 years, including in the 1970s exploring the social and organizational implications of ARPANET, which evolved to become what we call the Internet. He is a frequent keynote speaker and the author or co-author of 12 books, including his latest title Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living.

LinkedIn: Bob Johansen

Book:

Office Shock (get a 30% discount. Use the code “OFFSHOCK” at checkout)

What you will learn

• What is the office verse? (02:56)
• Where might we prefer physical or remote collaboration in information value creation? (06:28)
• What are the factors that drive information productivity? (10:37)
• Are there design factors for organisations which drive the ways they create value? (13:23) 
• How can we augment ourselves to create better organisations? (18:36)
• How can we design the work within organisations to be pleasant and avoid overload? (23:39)
• What are some practices to create insightful books and guidance for leaders (26:59)
• What are practices to engage with information throughout the day ?(31:52)

Resources

• BorgWarner
• WalMart
• Joseph Press
• Future-back
• 37signals
• ChatGPT
• Institute for the Future
• DALL-E 2
• Midjourney
• Google Glass
• ARPANET
• Blue Zones Project

Transcript

Ross Dawson: Bob, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.

Bob Johansen: Great to be here.

Ross: You have a book, just out, Office Shock, which looks at how offices are changing and what they will become. Perhaps you can just give us the thesis in a minute, we can dig into how they can help us to thrive on overload.

Bob: Sure. Office Shock is an abrupt, unsettling change in how, when, where, and even why, even why we work. Office Shock has been invoked, it has been scattering us as a result of COVID.
But it’s much deeper than that and it’s much more than just “when do we go back to the office?” We think this is a historic opportunity to rethink just how work happens and how work is integrated with our private lives.

Ross: One of the ways in which offices are shifting which you describe in the book is the “office verse” which is beyond any particular place, I understand.

Bob: Yes, definitely. The term metaverse has become quite a pop culture term. Those of us in Silicon Valley realize that one big corporation has tried to own the term metaverse.

We’ve decided to