Bill Jensen

The New Normal: The Truths Behind Your Hybrid Work
LinkedIn
May 20, 2021

For many of us, a mix of working from home and the office has always been the best solution. And the future of your work will most definitely a hybrid mix — but it took a pandemic to force most employers into it.

Your New Normal: Faster, Deeper, Better Connections
LinkedIn
April 28, 2021

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s the value of our connections and relationships. For a full year, we all longed for real hugs, hang-time with close friends and teammates, and non-Zoomed conversations.

Your New Normal: Make Every Day Awesome
LinkedIn
April 19, 2021

Part of a series making Post-COVID Future of Work more personal. Most thought leaders are opining on THE New Normal — how COVID has changed everything. Here we dig into what, exactly, that means to YOU.

It’s finally happening. Those of us who survived… (Far too many did not…) and those of us who are ready to thrive again… (Far too many are still struggling…) are emerging from our year-long pandemic cocoon. Ready to create new and better normals.

Your New Normal: 6 Must-Dos to Up Your Zoom Game
LinkedIn
March 10, 2021

For some, it was easy and fun. For many it’s been painstaking trial and error. Here I adapt a primer on 6 Must-Dos for Great Presentations into 6 Must-Dos to Up Your Zoom Game. (Using Zoom as a universal stand-in for all virtual teaming spaces and tools.)

Your New Normal: How Do You Define Success?
LinkedIn
March 10, 2021

The global pandemic did a lot more than disrupt health systems, the entire economy, and most things in our lives. It also forced many of us to ponder the big questions in life: Am I happy? What truly matters to me? Why am I doing what I do?

Your New Normal: Disrupt Yourself Continuously
LinkedIn
March 09, 2021

Part of a series making Post-COVID Future of Work more personal. Most thought leaders are opining on THE New Normal — how COVID has changed everything. Here we dig into what, exactly, that means to YOU.

If the past year has taught all of us anything, it’s that each of us better get real good at disrupting ourselves — before the next wave of imposed disruptions hit us.

And the follow-up lesson: During 2021, 2022, 2023, and beyond, the post-pandemic disruptive waves are gonna keep coming.

For years, I’ve coached leaders and organizations three crucial choices they need to make

Leadership in 2021: Where Do We Go From Here?
LinkedIn
January 09, 2021

After you take a moment to breathe a big sigh of relief… And after giving thanks for the health and safety you and your teammates still have… And after putting in place all the necessary health policies and protocols because the pandemic is not over… Where do you go from here?

2021 Simplified: Your Ultimate Path to Working Smarter
LinkedIn
January 08, 2021

What’s the one thing you learned about YOU during COVID/2020? About your values, your skills, your strengths, your priorities? Then, after you’ve pinpointed that: How will you apply that major lesson-learned to your successful 2021? Most everyone I’ve coached had one or two major Ahas: 1) “Family really is THE most important thing!” 2) “Wow, I am a lot more agile, adaptable, and did a lot more personal transformation than I thought I could!!” And those Ahas changed how they’re now approaching 2021.

The Future of Work Is Now
CEOWORLD Magazine
March 25, 2020

We have been dancing at the edge of the future of work for the past decade. Keeping our partnership with that future close enough to reap the amazing benefits of disruptive technologies, but at a safe enough social distance to ignore the messy truths and human costs attached to those disruptions.

Then came the coronavirus. Forcing massive disruptions upon us all. No place to hide from hidden human costs.

The Elephant in the Room That Most Leaders of the Future of Work Just Don't See
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

The standard against which the workforce will evaluate all leaders, all training and development, all work experiences, all teaming experiences, and all of corporate IT is no longer a comparison of one company to another, or one boss to another, or one work experience to another.

3 Amazing Steps to Great Meetings, As An ATTENDEE
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

If you Google “How to run great meetings,” back comes 286,000,000 results. Whoa! So much advice! Google “How to attend meetings” and you get even more results! But… Most of that advice is prettly lame or pedestrian: Be on time, take notes, avoid distrations, pay attention, yada, yada. Since most of us will spend most of our worklives attending other people’s meetings, isn’t it about time we got more strategic advice about how we attend meetings? Gotcha covered! Three powerful steps...

5 Profound Ways to Discover Your Life’s Work
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

Imagine having a profound, plainspoken conversation with your loved ones. You share how you figured out what matters and what doesn’t. You speak with absolute conviction: This is what I stood for, believed in, struggled with, and accomplished. This is my life’s work, and what I want to be remembered for.

The Wicked Truth About Employee Motivation in the Age of AI and Automation
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

From fear of robots taking over our lives, to automation being a threat to jobs, AI is creating impenetrable skills gaps and employee resistance to change.
The headline and subhead above are borrowed nearly word-for-word from a recent McKinsey post. Because, depending on your view and your paycheck, they either got everything right, or they got very little right.

When Getting Their Attention Isn’t Enough… When You Need Behavioral Change
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

We all know and experience how short attention spans are at work. Ridiculously short! (If you’re unclear how short yours is, take this test.)

But what about going beyond grabbing people’s attention… How do you communicate for behavioral change in an ADD World?

We Need a Business Revolution, And So Far, Our Leaders Are Failing Us
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

“Capitalism, as we know it, is dead.”

…declared Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, at this month’s Davos elite confab. “Stakeholder capitalism is finally hitting a tipping point,” he said. “Does that mean I have to fight for my employees? Yes. And yes… The planet is a key stakeholder. We’re in a planetary emergency.”

How to Understand and Survey Your Employees in Ways That Won’t Piss Them Off
LinkedIn
February 10, 2020

We’ve all been there, done that. Whether it’s your shopping experience, healthcare, gaming, restaurant, restroom, or workplace experience — everybody everywhere wants you to fill out their follow up survey or give them an experience score. And, after a while, we all feel like: “If I have to fill out one more damn survey, it automatically gets scored 0 out of ten smiley faces! ... Argh!”

The One Thing We All Need from the Future of Work
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

Or: What I Learned About Your Needs Through Your Skillsoft Downloads
I'm blessed to have been asked to do lots of training videos for Skillsoft. Each quarter, I receive a report on how many videos were watched and used within corporate training programs. Every three months, I learn about you: What you need and want to further your career and personal development. From the latest report...

Amazon: Poster Child for Widening the Gap Between the Two Futures of Work
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

There are not one, but two futures of work. One is full of hope, a place where digital natives create a world of ever-expanding opportunities for those with the right skills, drive, and agility. Limitless possibilities! Wooohoo!

How to Fix Leadership Development, 2020
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

13 Essentials for Leading Simpler, Smarter Companies
Leadership matters. And the coming decade will put every leader through constant stress tests. After selecting individuals with the required drive, passion, and vision, how do we further develop leaders for the new, highly disruptive, Fourth Revolutionized future of work and business? Leaders who can lead and coach others in the art and discipline of doing less and accomplishing more. (Adapted from 10 Essentials in The Simplicity Survival Handbook by Bill Jensen [2003], and updated with most recent Jensen Future of Work research.)

2020 Simplified: Your Ultimate Path to Working Smarter
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

Annual tradition in posting… Yearly coaching for clients… How to work smarter, not harder this year. In three simple steps.

How to Spot Tomorrow’s Great Places to Work, 2020
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

Great workplaces will do right by you, focus on your well-being, trust you, and invest in you and your teammates. But tomorrow’s great places to work will also focus a lot more on your work and your life — helping you accomplish morebetterfaster in much more caring, healthy, joyful, and rewarding ways, and will also help you (not just them) succeed in what matters to you. (Adapted from 10 Essentials in The Simplicity Survival Handbook by Bill Jensen [2003], and updated with most recent Jensen Future of Work research.)

9 Powerful Secrets to Successfully Managing Up
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

Secrets created by a panel of senior vice presidents, on condition of anonymity — they didn’t want their C-suite bosses knowing that this is exactly how they were being managed by their direct reports.

The Future of Work Called: What Message Did It Leave?
LinkedIn
January 06, 2020

A while back, I asked that question of my community on Quora. Below is a sample of the many messages left. (Be sure to read the recap at the very bottom.)

Want the Secret to a Super Healthy Future? Here It Is
LinkedIn
December 01, 2019

“As a physician, I was completely shocked. Most of us, when we think about health, we think about diet, exercise, sleep, the occasional trip to the doctor. But it’s really quite striking because there are decades of evidence that show that, in fact, probably the biggest contributor to our health is…” ~Dr. Kelli Harding, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, and researcher on the biggest factors that determine our health and wellbeing.

Your Future: Foretold By An Old Blind Woman
LinkedIn
November 29, 2019

Please. Take a moment, mindfully, in unbroken attention and presence, to read the following words.

They were spoken by the brilliant Toni Morrison, during her Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1993. She passed away just a few months ago, yet her presence and soulful written voice will be with us for generations to come. (For brevity, I’ve excerpted only a small portion of her talk. You can read or listen to the entire speech at the link above.)

Who Are You Called to Serve in the AI Era?
Linkedin
November 03, 2025

He used this question to help leaders to think beyond their immediate products or services and consider the underlying customer needs they fulfill.

Simplicity
Perseus
February 02, 2019

FIRST OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Making the complex clear and simple, making work simpler. Number 5 Leadership/ Management book on Amazon in 2000. While sitting among the best-seller list was nice, the acclaim that made him most proud was being called a knowledge worker’s Studs Terkel. “I focus on how real people get read work done,” he says.

Work 2.0
Perseus
February 02, 2019

SECOND OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Bill Jensen foresaw the current workplace changes long before they occurred. Many of today’s biggest organizational and work shifts were predicted in Work 2.0.

Simplicity Survival Handbook
Perseus
February 02, 2019

THIRD OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Detailed How To follow-up to Simplicity. These How Tos are still among Bill’s most valuable tips when speaking and conducting workshops with corporate audiences.

What Is Your Life's Work?
Harper Collins
February 02, 2019

FOURTH OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Among Bill’s most deeply personal books. In it he captures the intimate exchanges between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and caring teammates, all talking about what matters at work and in life. Thousands of participants wrote what became known as legacy letters — one- to three-page letters to loved ones about the love- and value-based legacy they wished to leave behind.

Hacking Work
Portfolio/Penguin
February 02, 2019

FIFTH OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Named by Harvard Business Review as one of the top breakthrough books of that year. It revealed how the workforce was becoming an army of benevolent hackers, working around corporate bureaucracies that simply were not changing fast enough to meet marketplace demands.

The Courage Within Us
NetMinds
February 02, 2019

SIXTH OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Revealed the secrets of 100 great disruptive heroes on how to thrive and take advantage of continuous disruptions, disorder, disarray, and change.

Disrupt! Think Epic, Be Epic
NetMinds
February 02, 2019

SEVENTH OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Revealed the secrets of 100 great disruptive heroes on how to thrive and take advantage of continuous disruptions, disorder, disarray, and change.

Future Strong
Motivational Press
February 02, 2019

EIGHTH OF 8 BESTSELLERS. SEE http://www.simplerwork.com/books/ FOR ALL 8 BOOKS. Maps the five toughest choices each of us must make to create our best futures. It is based upon Bill’s breakthrough research, studying the future of work through the lens of deeply personal individual choices.

Insights Series: Bill Jensen - What should leaders be doing now to prepare for a post-Covid world?
Thinkers360
March 05, 2021

Bill Jensen, CEO, The Jensen Group discusses "What should leaders be doing now to prepare for a post-Covid world?"

You face a fork in the road this year. To continue being short-sighted: Bolting AI solutions onto current processes, focused mainly on cutting costs, ramping up efficiencies? Or to massively disrupt and reimagine how humans and technology work together, creating value in completely new ways — leveraging and elevating our humanness. Choose well, leaders. You can't afford to get this wrong.

Translating Digital Transformation into People Transformation will be among this year’s critical and valued skillsets. As ChatGPT and other smarter-than-any-individual technologies take off, the design of work will face a major inflection point. Will 2024 be remembered as the year a real-world Skynet was ushered in? Or will we finally realize that we need to focus on that translation to turn “people are our greatest asset” into reality. Where we invest most this year — in people or technology — will foretell our future.

2021 will determine whether we have the courage to address the most wicked future of work issues that arose from the flames of the 2020 global dumpster fire. The top three: 1. Will we finally acknowledge and address that we’re leaving far too many people behind? 2. Will the workforce finally step up and demand more control of their lives (as 2020 decimated so many must-be-in-the-office/must-be-tightly-managed practices)? 3. Will companies finally step up to people development and empowerment needs that are decades old and were forced on them by COVID-19?

Why Introspection Matters During the Pandemic
Thinkers360
January 02, 2021

Thirty-five years ago my parents joined me at my business launch party at my penthouse offices in Soho, New York. My own new firm — no more working for anyone else! Woohoo! My father was a retired cop and moved on to cleaning plane interiors for American Airlines. In the middle of the party he asked: “Where’s your security?” He didn’t mean bouncers or guards. Nor was he asking about financial security from angel investors. (Although Mom was one, and never told him!) He meant: “How will you be able to afford a home, or retire? Where’s your long-term security?” “Here, Dad,” I replied, pointing repeatedly to my chest. “Here.” Every self-driven and agile individual has a similar story: Belief in oneself, our vision, our drive, and our passions is what keeps us going during the toughest situations. But few of us have experienced anything like the dumpster fire known as COVID-19, 2020. By mid-year, more than 100,000 small businesses were forever shuttered. And that trend only grew as the next wave of the pandemic hit. Many firms that received PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans eventually filed for bankruptcy. 2020 was tough on all of us! Belief in oneself, our vision, and our personal agility are no longer enough. We need more. We need family. teammate, and community support. We need government support. And we need more openness about our hardships. Owning Our Hardship Truths, Recognizing Personal Growth In coaching senior executives across the globe who face transformational decisions, I’ve found that the most important pre-work is introspection — understanding the personal challenges interwoven within business challenges. That’s especially true for all of us that survived 2020! None of us likes admitting failure. At heart: we’re eternal optimists. Our DNA is to always believe in our personal ability to adapt, overcome, and succeed. Yet precious few of us create the time to process personal growth in-the-moment. We’re too busy trying to create a 25th hour in the day so we can get more done! But process, we must. With insight, our hardships become our renewed source of strength and perserverence. Introspection jumpstarts successful pandemic leadership. During the past year I’ve asked hundreds of executives one question, based on their 2020 COVID-19 experiences: What’s the biggest thing you learned about YOU in the past few months? Across the globe and across many industries, two universal lessons-learned have emerged: • Family matters most. Forced to work from home, many of us have reconnected with the most primal of needs — family. Entrepreneurs, self-starters, and hyper-driven individuals often forget this. Our business creations and successes sometimes supersede all else. (I was one of those guilty of this. Sixteen years ago, one of the contributing factors to my divorce was an obsessive focus on my business.) • “Wow! I hadn’t realized how resilient I am!” During crises, adapting every moment of every day becomes almost routine. Because your focus has been on gazillions of external pandemic forces — like new safety protocals, creating new revenue streams, and just keeping the business alive or your paychecks coming — few of us appreciate how much personal transformation we just experienced. Your Story: Why Introspection Matters During the Pandemic Self-awareness and self-care is key to all leaders’ success. You can’t succeed in the marketplace if you’re not taking care of yourself and not fully aware of your strengths and weaknesses. But let’s put that aside for the moment. Your teammates, your suppliers, and your customers were all thrashing about with you in that 2020 dumpster fire. They need your empathy, your support, your attention, your compassion, and they’d benefit from your story — hearing about your vulnerability, your challenges, your lessons learned, what you went through with them. Your 2020 experiences — your story — are among your key leadership tools in helping others get through one of the most disruptive and challenging years they’ll ever experience. And that leadership begins with understanding what you yourself just went through. Bill Jensen makes it easier to leap into tomorrow. He is CEO of The Jensen Group, is ranked as a Top Ten Global Thought Leader on Digital Disruption, and is an IBM futurist. His next book is The Day Tomorrow Said No, which maps how to create our best future of work. Download your free copy here: https://www.tomorrowsaidy.es

The Future of Work Is Now
Thinkers360
December 26, 2020

“A crisis is made by men, who enter into the crisis with their own prejudices, propensities, and predispositions. A crisis is the sum of intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored.” — Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain We have been dancing at the edge the future of work for the past decade. Keeping our partnership with that future close enough to reap the amazing benefits of disruptive technologies, but at a safe enough social distance to ignore the messy truths and human costs attached to those disruptions. Then came the dumpster fire known as 2020. COVID-19 forced massive disruptions upon us all. No place to hide from hidden human costs. Suddenly, everything changed. Companies and managers who had forever insisted that employees remain desk-bound to ensure proper supervision suddenly found ways to make teleworking work; school districts that were stuck in the 20th century suddenly found new ways to teach, evaluate students, and keep track of learning; every organization in every industry completely rethought every aspect of work. Suddenly, teachers, healthcare workers, grocery store employees, community food pantries, and delivery people became far more important than NBA players, pop-stars, and all who we had worshipped just days earlier. The need for major changes was not tied solely to a global pandemic. They had been there all along, as part of the coming disruptive future of work. The most direct path to that future is not paved with disruptions caused by viruses or technologies like AI, 5G, or the Internet of Things. It is paved by those who are bold and brave enough to get past their own limiting beliefs. Where Will Your Leadership Take Us? Pandemics are one of four biblical horsemen [ https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/03/17/Ten-Ways-Pandemics-Change-Humanity/ ] creating clarity, meaning in our lives, and shaping the rest of human history. As Andrew Nikiforuk [ http://andrewnikiforuk.com ] wrote decades ago in his book, The Fourth Horseman, pandemics may seem to be random events, but they are actually the result of systemic vulnerabilities we’ve created ourselves. The same is true about how today’s leaders are approaching the future of work. Are you creating the next apocalypse or several decades of abundance? Your ability to move past your current prejudices, propensities, and predispositions may be the deciding factor. Once the current coronavirus crisis is over, we need you focused on the coming Era of AI. What you do, how you lead, how you plan, truly matters to us all. You are the translator between extremely disruptive digital transformations and those we wish to empower to do their best. You are the difference between everyone soaring to new heights or having a robopocalypse forced upon them. More than ever, we need you to understand how major changes in technologies impact human behavior, needs, performance, and motivation. This is your legacy moment. We are at the edge, advancing towards a tech-driven future that has lost major chunks of its humanity. How do you as a leader ensure that we build a more human-centered future? The fierce urgency of tomorrow begins today. 4 Ways to Use Today’s Pandemic to Jumpstart the Future of Work 1. Take Stock. Reflect. Reimagine the Possibilities. This could be one of the top five societal moments in your life that radically impacts your thinking. Within just weeks, most every system you use has been disrupted. Are you disrupting yourself and your pre-conceived ideas at the same pace, with the same intensity? Define success in a month or two as: How radically has your thinking changed because of this historic moment? 2. Study the Soft Stuff Behind Virus-Driven Teleworking Changes. We’ve had teleworking technologies for decades, and they keep getting better and cheaper. Technology has never been the issue. The real reasons teleworking has been limited until now: Not trusting your people to manage themselves, and treating employees as costs to be managed instead of assets to be freed and leveraged. What have you learned about freeing human potential because of this crisis? How have you reimagined productivity, learning, and personal development across the company because of this crisis? 3. Discover Your People’s Real-Life Stories. The reason that Undercover Boss is compelling reality TV is that it takes executives out of the C-suite and exposes them to the human dramas and life challenges behind each employee’s work. Use this crisis to get to know the real-world difficulties and struggles of at least five of your employees. For decades, I have asked senior executives to spend a day doing frontline jobs, and every leader said it was one of their most eye-opening professional experiences. What have you learned about your people because of this crisis? 4. What Do You Want Your Legacy to Be? This crisis has afforded each of us the opportunity to reexamine and reimagine what truly matters. How has this crisis caused you to rethink the impact you wish to have on the world? If it’s not bigger and bolder than when the crisis began, return to Number 1: Reflect and Reimagine. The future of work is now. The pandemic crisis is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the world differently, to lead differently, to make a difference in more profound ways than you ever imagined. Go for it! Bill Jensen makes it easier to leap into tomorrow. He is CEO of The Jensen Group, is ranked as a Top Ten Global Thought Leader on Digital Disruption, Top 5 Thought Leader on the Future of Work, and is an IBM futurist. His newest book is The Day Tomorrow Said No, which maps how to create our best future of work. Download your free copy here: https://www.tomorrowsaidy.es

Future of Work

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