Episode 1 —Boundless Podcast — Why I care about the future of work

[01:00] Paul: Welcome to The Boundless Podcast. I'm Paul Millerd, and I created this podcast because I'm passionate about making sense of the future of work and having conversations with the innovators, creators, and thought leaders who are carving their path in today's fast-changing world. You can check out the podcast and more on boundlesspod.com. In today's first episode, I just want to take a step back and introduce myself. So I'm Paul Millerd. I have been fascinated about the future of work for as long as I know.

It wasn't always just thinking about the future of work. I didn't have that phrase in the back of my mind. Early in my career, I worked in a number of internships for Fortune 500 companies. I was fascinated with why do people do things like this. I often talk to managers who would say, well, this is just the way you have to do things, acknowledging that it didn't make sense. Excess paperwork, rules you have to follow.

And I've always been somewhat of an insider-outsider looking at these organizations, trying to understand why are we arranging ourselves like this. Why are they so frustrating to work in? Why do they not get the best out of people? Early in my career, I saw that I was not going to be a perfect fit for the corporate world. A lot of advice you get is about putting in your time, following a set path, and I just had many different interests. Going back to college, I decided to do a dual degree in both industrial engineering and management, and And that was mostly because I wanted to increase my options.

I always thought trying to know what you wanted to do when you grow up seemed like a ridiculous notion. The world is changing fast, jobs were changing fast. I wasn't really sure. So maybe it was a cop-out, maybe it was my curiosity, but I've always been attracted to options where I could combine different disciplines. So in college, it was engineering and business. And then after college, I decided to go into finance.

That was a new area for me, but something I saw through internships that was the language of business. And understanding that would be another piece in the puzzle. A puzzle of what? I didn't really know at the time, but I really let my curiosity drive me. And early on in my career, I decided that I was not going to worry about rising up the ranks. In an organization or maximizing my earnings and really just pursued options that where I could work on interesting projects, potentially be in environments that would push me and help me grow and essentially feed that curiosity.

One of the unintended consequences of staying curious early in my career and not putting a ton of emphasis on money, power, and status, I mean, those things definitely drove me, but I wasn't as worried about leaving companies. I wasn't worried about what the external view of me was. I had a hunch early in my career that staying curious, developing a diversity of skills, putting myself in new environments where I was uncomfortable and learning was going to be valuable. And I think a lot of that has really paid off. I have worked on projects as a freelancer now where I'm combining such a weirdly diverse range of skills, bringing together web design, graphic design, advanced skills in PowerPoint. Thank you, consulting.

Uh, other skills, just making sense of ideas, communication, writing, different things I've done in many different chapters in my career. Have come together in a way that I can now spot different opportunities where I can bring these together and more actively think about what is the kind of work I want to do. I can follow what I'm curious about and apply many different skills to solving problems. And I've realized this really makes me valuable and is one of the things that really drives me in understanding the future of work. How do we unlock this in other people? I may have accidentally stumbled upon a new approach to building a career in today's economy, but I'm most excited about helping others do that.

And this is what this podcast is about. One of the luckiest breaks for me was when I landed a job at McKinsey Company. I've written about this, but most people may not know I actually found a posting for a job at McKinsey back in 2008. On Monster.com. I'm not sure many people use Monster.com anymore, or did then. Maybe that was my advantage.

The type of people that were looking to work at McKinsey might not have been looking for that job. Anyway, I'll take that lucky break. And it was a job opportunity working in a research office in the Boston area, focused on operations, something I had background in from undergrad and working on manufacturing floors. During my senior project and other internships. And really, it changed my life. It opened up two things for me.

One, it gave me a set of skills and intensive training that really pushed me to the next level. I had managers that believed in me, that pushed me beyond my comfort zone, and really helped me grow and improve. And two, it made me realize that high-performance environments were fundamentally different and possible. And I'm very grateful to have experienced this early in my career. But it was also a blessing and a curse. After working there, I experienced other environments that didn't get the best out of their people, weren't concerned with building environments that maximized motivation.

This was really frustrating for me. This has driven me in two ways. First, I am super passionate about helping people find opportunities, environments, companies, situations where they can thrive in their own career. This started with me helping people on the side, coaching people, helping people break into great jobs like I was able to land early in my career. It then evolved into something more formal. Doing some career coaching on the side, doing some writing, doing more formal volunteering and teaching with my undergrad university.

And I've really found that work rewarding. It is the best thing ever when you see someone who is able to make that change and be in an environment where they can surround themselves with people that believe in them. And they're able to grow, they're able to see new opportunities and push themselves beyond what they thought they were capable of. Of. The second thing is that it has made me explore what drives human motivation and success in modern organizations. One of the troubling conclusions I've come to is that a lot of the ways we're setting up organizations are driving people to fail.

They don't get the best out of people, and I'll definitely explore some of my writing into this on future podcasts. But that's part of the motivation for this podcast as well, to continue learning. I don't think I have all the answers. Uh, it's complicated and I can identify things that are wrong with modern organizations, but I don't have the answers of how to fix it. I think the today's economy is undergoing a transformation into understanding what does that future look like? What do these organizations shape up like?

What is the nature of freelance work? How do you make it on your own, partnering with other people, unleashing your own value? These are the questions I want to explore in this podcast. I've been thinking a lot about for the past few years, and I'm excited to learn more. Stay humble. I think the more I've learned, the more I realize I don't know, and that just pushes me further, trying to talk to different people, explore different options, and figure out What does this all mean?

What is the future of work?