Presentation for Central Coast Community College

1. Stealing Startups Culture
What Futurist Companies do to Unleash their
Employees Super Powers
Heidi Alexandra Pollard
CEO, UQ Power
Workplace Futurist and
Company Culture Architect

2. We’ve been fortunate to work with many leaders looking for a better way of doing
business for the wellbeing of people and planet.
We’ve worked with dozens of businesses who are passionate about redefining work
for the future so that people can love their work everyday.
Better Way To Do Business
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

3. As workplace futurists and culture hackers, we get excited about the creation of
uncorporate cultures and how business and people are adapting and creating new
ways of working in order to remain relevant and be sustainable.
We’re passionate about
Work / play / living
Generosity Economy
Global nomads
City based dwellers
Massively mobile
Energy mgt
Disconnection
Depression
Co-working
Collaboration
End of retirement
Life/Work Blend
Cloud computing
Education reengineering
Quadruple bottom line

4. ““Heidi we’ve seen moreHeidi we’ve seen more
change in the last 3 yearschange in the last 3 years
than in the lastthan in the last 3030.”.”

5. Shift happens.
• Hyper-connectivity
• Increased Demand for CSR
• Accelerating Technology
• People want tailored convenience

6. Major shifts.
• BC / AC – Before Christ
• Bi / Ai – Before iPhone
• BT / AT – Before Tesla

7. www.UQPower.com.au
iPhones have become more valuable
than oil!
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

8. AND A MAJOR SHIFT TO MORE
START-UPS WITH A
Human centric
FOCUS

9. Facebook – world’s largest
media owner
Creates NO content

10. Alibaba – world’s most
valuable retailer
has NO inventory

11. UBER – world’s largest
transport company
Owns NO VEHICLES

12. air bnb – world’s largest
accommodation provider
Owns NO HOTELS
yet does 500,000 average #nightly stays

13. Let’s take a walk in theLet’s take a walk in the
Land of PossibilityLand of Possibility
and see if you can be aand see if you can be a
futurist too!futurist too!

14. Let’s take a walk in theLet’s take a walk in the
Land of PossibilityLand of Possibility
and see if you can be aand see if you can be a
futurist too!futurist too!

15. www.UQPower.com.au
DISCUSSION
How many predictions did you guess?
Which predictions surprised you the most?
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

16. What does it mean to you?

17. www.UQPower.com.au
What does it mean to you?
To be sustainable and grow, CCCC needs to be creative in
its approach and responsive to its customers.
In pairs – discuss - what did you find most interesting in
the video and how might it apply to CCCC as an
organisation?
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

18. Team discussion
How will education be disrupted in future?
Where will CCCC be just a few years from now if you do nothing?
How ready is CCCC for the future?
When’s the best time to innovate?
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

19. www.UQPower.com.au
CHANGE IS GOING TO HAPPEN
YOU CAN CHOOSE TO LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU
OR YOU CAN
Make It Happen
AND LEAD THE WAY!
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

20. www.UQPower.com.au
WHAT DO START-UPS DO TO UNLEASH
THEIR EMPLOYEES
Super Powers?
AND HOW CAN YOU ADAPT THEM FOR
YOUR WORKPLACE?
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

21. 3 STARTUP CULTURE HACKS TO STEAL TO UNLEASH YOUR PEOPLE’S
Super Powers

22. HACK #1
REIMAGINE THE OFFICE

23. 3 tips TO REIMAGINE
YOUR OFFICE SPACE
1. Think of your office like Norwegian telco Telenor’s CEO Jon
Baksaas does - not as real estate but a communication tool.
2. Place strategic coffee machines - chance encounters and
interactions between knowledge workers improve performance.
3. Place potted plants and live foliage in the office to make it more
“green” – it can increase happiness and productivity by 15%.
Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-psychology-office-plants-idUSKCN0HR2DW20141002
https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people

24. “YOUR seniority AND status
IN THE ORGANISATION, DOES NOT
NEED TO BE REINFORCED
BY HOW MUCH
space
YOU GET.”
Philip Tidd / Gensler Architecture, The Guardian

25. COMMUNICATION
TOOL

26. Zappos uses a new metric -
“collisionable hours” –
to measure a space’s
effectiveness.

27. COLLISIONABLE
SPACE

28. European start-up
Arkyne Technologies is
developing a Bioo Lite.
Using nanotechnology,
when placed within a
plant pot, it harnesses
the power of
photosynthesis to charge
smart devices. The
system generates
electricity using only
water, soil, and the
energy of any common
house plant. Source: http://www.collective-evolution.c

29. GREEN SPACE IS PRODUCTIVE SPACE

30. HACK #2
RIPPING UP THE ORG CHART

31. JOIN THE FLAT PACK
Never before have there been
so many unprecedented and
innovative approaches to
organising people
and structuring organisations.

32. STOP, COLLABORATE & LISTEN
Things are changing fast. The new workplace has opened up
to fresh models of collaboration, openness and
information sharing.
This evolution is being driven by Millennials who value
a high level of autonomy and expect to have a say in
decisions that affect them.
It’s also being shaped by new visions of leadership,
which means fewer middle managers and more empowered
employees.
Plus technological innovations mean employees can work
from anywhere, and there’s a serious argument for ripping
up the org chart.

33. “Flattening an organisation isn’t just about
rearranging an organisational chart.
It’s about empowering employees to make
and participate in decisions and
communicate with everyone across the
company.”
Author of the Future of Work, Jacob Morgan

34. At Zappos teams set their own wages, decide on their
own rosters and are empowered to send thank you
cards, flowers, free gifts to customers as they wish.
No delegation of authority, no approval necessary.

35. HACK #3
PURPOSE AND MEANING

36. Only businesses with a clear
‘reason for being’, or purpose,
will be innovative and truly
sustainable in the future.
TIM BROWN, CEO, IDEO

37. CSR CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM
Compatible with traditional leadership Requires conscious leadership
Reflects a mechanistic view of business Views business as complex, adoptive
system
Shareholders must sacrifice for safety Integrates interests of all stakeholders
Easy to meet as a charitable gesture;
often seen as ‘green washing’
Requires genuine transformation
through commitment to 4 principles –
higher purpose, stakeholder orientation,
conscious leadership and conscious
culture
Assumes all good deeds are desirable Requires that good deeds also advance
the company’s core purpose and create
value for the whole system
Implications for business performance
unclear
Significantly outperforms traditional
business model on financial and other
criteria

38. “Profit as a sole
measure of
success was
rejected by 92%
of Millennials and
71% of business
leaders.”
The Deloitte
Millennial Survey
and EIU Societal
Purpose Survey

39. ‘At Patagonia our reason for being’ is to
“Build the best product, cause no
unnecessary harm, use business to
inspire and implement solutions
to the environmental crisis”
In 2011, it famously urged its customers to buy less, with a
full-page advert in the New York Times that read,
“Don’t buy this jacket”.
Over the next two years, sales grew
40%

40. SO WHERE DO YOU START?
#startwithU

41. LEVERAGE YOUR MIND
Your brain is pre-programmed to answer questions.
Who was your best friend at school?
What was your first car?
www.UQPower.com.au
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

42. BECOME A HIGHER POWER LEADER
BY ASKING BIGGER AND BETTER
questions
www.UQPower.com.au

43. • Person A – share with Person B something you’d like
to see improved at work.
• Person B – you can only respond with questions
(no problem solving, telling or sharing your stuff)
EXTREME QUESTION CHALLENGE

44. Discussion
• Where are the future opportunities?
• Where are the attractive gaps in the market?
• What can we leverage?
• Who else does this well?
• What are the obstacles that could stop us?
• What better questions do we need to ask?
UQPower.com.au

45. If there is any hope of change it has to #startwithU
U must CHANGE
U must GROW
U must GET UNCOMFORTABLE
#startwithU
UQPower.com.au#StartWithU

46. FEEDBACK
UQPower.com.au