Welcome to Transform’s Q&A Author Spotlight Series, where we feature insightful authors who are redefining people and culture, work, leadership, and technology. Join us to gain fresh perspectives and practical knowledge from those at the forefront of today’s evolving professional landscape.
About The Author
Brian Elliott is a leadership advisor and noted expert on the future of work. After 25 years in tech as a startup CEO and executive at companies like Google and Slack, Brian founded Future Forum, a think tank focused on the future of work. He also co-authored the bestseller How the Future Works and was named to Forbes’ Future of Work 50.
His work enables leaders to build a better future of work for people and organizations. It is rooted in research combined with practical, tactical advice from his work with a wide range of organizations.
Background and Inspiration
Transform: What inspired you to write about HR and the Future of Work, and what keeps you motivated in this field?
Brian: Writing, especially about the future of work, pulls together my professional passions. I’m a voracious consumer of research – a bit of a data geek. In my career, I became a cultural turnout specialist: every struggling business or product has at its root a team that’s not working together. Maybe most importantly, I think we can make work better for people from all walks of life, and at the same time improve organizational outcomes.
My interests in all of these go back 30 years, but they came together in founding Future Forum, a think tank that combined data and dialog among leaders, and my book, How the Future Works. We started the Future Forum at the start of the pandemic, which drove a long-overdue shift in perspective around how, where, and when work gets done.
Today, I continue to dig into the latest research not just about technology and the role of flexibility in the workplace but also about culture, inclusion, and connection at work and combine it with stories from organizations that are finding new ways of working.
Transform: Can you share a pivotal moment or experience that led to your interest in the future of work?
Brian: The pandemic really created an opportunity to step back and question a lot of conventional wisdom, including my own. I’d always had a deep affinity for research and a tendency to question orthodox thinking, and the real-life experiments we were all running created a real opportunity to not only learn but change people’s perspectives.
The phrase “future of work” gets used for a lot of topics. For me, it’s not about predictions but about how we better understand the macro shifts that are already influencing us the most at work – demographics, cultures, technology—and what we can learn from people experimenting with new ways of working.
I believe we can make work better for people, and at the same time improve organizational outcomes. Too often, the conversation devolves into “us versus them” thinking.
Transform: How have your professional experiences influenced your writing and perspectives on workplace trends?
Brian: Early in my career, I really got to understand the truth behind the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Having been a strategy consultant and a pretty arrogant one at that, I learned the hard way. Fortunately, I had some folks who were willing to point me in a better direction – and more fortunately, I was willing to listen.
Building successful teams requires bringing together people with different points of view and diverse backgrounds, and not just getting them aligned but building trust.
While I’ve spent 25 years building technology businesses and companies, I always focus on how we interact as people. The role of transparency and trust in building better outcomes. The real challenges and benefits of building diverse and inclusive teams. The important role of connection in building healthy workplaces.
Writing Process
Transform: What does your typical writing day look like when working on topics related to HR and business?
Brian: There’s definitely not a typical, but I do have a couple of patterns. Most of my longer-form work now comes out as columns for outlets like Charter, HBR, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Those take a fair amount of work because I’m combining data-based insights with storytelling from companies. Even getting to a first draft that I’m proud enough to turn into an editor means I’ve got to not only have the idea and the outline but sizable blocks of time over the course of a few days to really get deeply into the work.
There are also times when something I read just gets me going, and in 30 minutes, I’ve got something on LinkedIn that feels right to me and is “on brand”—data-driven with a story behind it.
Transform: How do you stay current with the rapidly changing trends in the workplace to ensure your writing remains relevant?
Brian: I talk with many leaders and dig into the latest research. I also spend a lot of time talking with senior leaders across a wide range of organizations to understand the challenges they’re facing, as well as dig deep with organizations into their own experiments with new ways of working, from flexibility to gatherings to AI. On the storytelling front, I occassionally end up writing about the companies and executives that I directly support as an advisor (with their permission of course).
I consume a lot of new research and other writers’ output as well. The headline versions of research are often pretty awful, even if the story is decent, so I’ll dig into the actual studies themselves, often corresponding with the authors or asking others in the field what they think.
Transform: Do you prefer to outline your ideas in detail before writing, or do you allow the narrative to develop organically?
Brian: I’ve done both, at various times, to varying degrees of success. The book was definitely a process of outlining and refining, and very organized – there were three of us! My longer columns tend to be outlined as well since they have a fair amount of complexity and depth regarding various protagonists and how to weave in research.
When I see something that gets me going, I’ll more often just blurt it out – and then come back and refine it. The more passion-driven, the more an outline gets in my way.
Content Development
Transform: How do you develop How the Future Works‘s case studies or examples, and do they evolve as you write?
Brian: We tell stories in the book from leaders at a wide range of companies, which was a big goal of ours. Since we were primarily talking about the benefits of flexibility in where and when people work, we didn’t just want to talk about tech companies. Slack was backing Future Forum, and we worked there, so there’s a fair amount about what we did there – our own experiences – and from folks at Dropbox and IBM. But we’ve got stories from talking with people at Genentech, Levi’s, Royal Bank of Canada, and others.
We definitely wanted stories from people who’ve tried new ways of working but were also willing to be pretty open about the struggles along the way. Getting beyond the PR spin takes work and people who trust you.
It’s pretty similar to what I do now: my latest case study feature on building connections featured stories from Allstate and Zillow.
Transform: What is the most challenging aspect of creating relatable and impactful business scenarios?
Brian: I think it’s about getting past the pablum of typical corporate PR stories. I’ve got nothing against press releases and company case studies, I’ve been part of many in my day, but stories are about people. While the occasional CEO shows up in my work, I’d rather write about someone mid-level who’s taken risks and is doing something different that seems to be working.
The other challenge is showing impact from a business perspective. Much, if not most, of my work is focused on challenging conventional wisdom, which doesn’t go over as well with folks rooted in conventional wisdom (who tend to sit at the top of organizations) unless you can also point to real business outcomes: faster growth, lower turnover, etc.
Both of those elements require that people be willing to share and that public company PR departments be willing to participate.
Themes and Messages
Transform: What core themes do you explore in your book, “How the Future Works,” and why are they significant to you and your readers?
Brian: The pace of change in how we work is accelerating faster than what leaders ever imagined possible. What felt like radical shifts driven by the pandemic began a conversation: how do we enable individuals to do their best work, lead better lives, and drive our organizations forward?
The subtitle, “leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives,” lets you know we’ll focus on flexibility. But achieving true flexibility—not only in where but critically when people work—requires overcoming decades of habits and conventional wisdom built up around “the right way to work” based on 9-to-5 days full of meetings in office buildings.
It requires rebuilding how work gets done. It requires new ways of working, new skills, and new strengths—moving from resistance to re-design—to lead with purpose, coach rather than tell, and believe that by letting go, you’ll get more back.
How the Future Works is a how-to book that empowers leaders with the tools and tips to do better for their people and, in turn, their businesses. It draws from extensive original global research from Future Forum and case studies from a wide range of companies like Dropbox, Genentech, IBM, Levi’s, Salesforce, Slack, and the Royal Bank of Canada.
Transform: How do you balance conveying important messages about the future of work with engaging storytelling or practical advice?
Brian: I think storytelling and practical advice are key to conveying important messages. In the book, we talk about how flexibility creates an opportunity to redesign work to be more inclusive. We back it up with research but also tell stories from caregivers, Black employees, and people with different ways of thinking. The message, research, and storytelling aren’t enough, though – you’ve got to back it up with tactical advice on how to build more inclusive teams. We run through various advice and how-to guides to tools like personal user manuals and team agreement processes.
Transform: Are there recurring motifs or ideas in “How the Future Works” that you believe are crucial for understanding the future of work?
Brian: You can’t unscramble an egg. People’s perspectives on five days a week in the office, 9-to-5, have changed. The underlying forces behind that shift were already there: broadband access and consumer-grade SaaS tools. However, the experimentation and iteration we all did created new opportunities, and those who thrived best engaged their teams in figuring out what works.
Demographic shifts and technology, particularly AI, will continue to shape the world of work. What remains the same is that if you want those changes to benefit you, you need to engage your teams and experiment with new ways of working.
Challenges and Rewards
Transform: What has been the most challenging part of your career as an author focused on HR and/or the Future of Work?
Brian: Selling books. Writing a book is hard enough, but that’s less than half of the work. Publishers range from rotten to great, but unless you already are a bestselling author, the work begins when you turn in a manuscript.
Transform: What’s the most rewarding aspect of writing about workplace trends?
Brian: The best thing in the world is when someone says, “We’re using your book at my company,” and wants to share their story or ask me some questions! I get people who write to me saying how much they appreciate my voice – my advocacy for better ways of working.
Transform: How do you handle periods of writer’s block or when new workplace trends seem overwhelming?
Brian: Exercise and music help keep me regulated. Going for a long walk or a run and listening to music (not more podcasts!) will usually get me out of a haze. I’ve also learned that I need to block off big chunks of time, and allow within that for breaks – and not every day.
Publishing and Reception
Transform: Can you describe your journey to getting published in the HR and business genre?
Brian: Sure! I’ve always written for internal audiences – my teams, my companies – but started branching out. I wrote a couple of pieces for smaller outlets and eventually got published in HBR. From there, a publisher contacted me to see if I’d be interested in turning that article into a book.
The article was too narrow, but I grabbed my Future Forum co-founders Helen Kupp and Sheela Subramanian and asked if they were interested in doing the book we’d contemplated writing together “right now.” It worked out pretty well, I think!
Three authors aren’t easy, but we knew each other, our strengths and gaps, and we were well organized. Besides my own writing, I’ve also continued to work with various co-authors like Stanford Professor Pamela Hinds, IBM CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux, and, most recently, ThinkLab’s Amanda Schneider.
Transform: How do you respond to feedback and criticism of your work, especially from HR professionals?
Brian: I appreciate it! I’m looking to learn, so having different perspectives helps. Sometimes it will result in a new story – a challenge someone’s facing, a different way they’ve approached a problem.
In my advisory work, this is critical. Even if someone brings me in to “give a talk” about my work, I’ll use 10 minutes to ground the conversation, and then we’re into Q&A, ideas, and objections.
Transform: What has been the most surprising reaction from readers of How the Future Works?
Brian: ” Wow, I thought this would all be done by now” is a common refrain. Every six months, there’s another round of headlines around “return to work” (ugh, I hate that term) and pushing people back to office, but the needle hasn’t shifted materially for two years. We wrote the book in 2021, and I get a lot of people saying how well it’s proven out – even among some who, at the time, called flexible work a fad.
Advice and Future Plans
Transform: What advice would you give to HR professionals or business leaders who aspire to write about their field?
Brian: Just do it. Start small—develop a following on LinkedIn, write for your team, pass stuff around your network, find smaller outlets and publish. Especially when you’re in the seat, it can be hard to be open – but it’s more powerful if you can find a way.
Transform: What’s next for you? Are you working on any new projects or books about the future of work?
Brian: I’m doing a lot of advisory work with organizations that are wrestling with challenges around employee engagement, what the heck we mean by “productivity” and the parallels between flexible work and generative AI adoption. It’s keeping me a bit too busy at the moment to turn into another book, but there’s another one in there someday.
Transform: How do you envision your writing evolving as workplace trends continue to change?
Brian: I find it’s getting easier for me to get more personal, to have it less rooted in the research (my safe zone) and more in the stories. In terms of trends, Gen AI is the hot thing for understandable reasons – my personal perspective is it’s overhyped in the short term, under from a long term perspective. But it’s a growing area of my own focus, albeit on the human systems side of it, not just what it can (theoretically) do.
Personal Insights
Transform: If you could have dinner with any three thought leaders in HR or business, dead or alive, who would they be and why?
Brian: Some of my favorite voices are very much alive, and maybe it’s that I’ve met or seen them briefly, but I would love dinner with Edith Cooper, Tsedal Neely, and Reshmi Saujani. I’d gladly host and just sit there and listen to the three of them for hours on end.
Transform: What book (besides your own) do you wish you had written and why?
Brian: The one that’s most similar and yet not is “Out of Office” by Anne Helen Peterson and Charlie Warzel, both writers that I love, whose work isn’t as “how to” as ours but more emotionally deep.
Transform: How do you unwind and stay grounded when you’re not immersed in writing about the future of work?
Brian: My wife and I are lucky enough to be empty nesters, so we’re traveling together more, seeing new places (or old places), and getting out of our bubble. I’m a fan of regular exercise, decent sleep and a good diet keeping my brain on track. And I love to cook for family and friends.
Deep Dive into Specific Works
Transform: What’s the story behind the title of “How the Future Works”?
Brian: It’s admittedly audacious, but it gets your attention. The subtitle, “leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives” tells you more about what you’ll find in it. We wrestled with the title for months, even tapped some friends who were comms people for ideas (that was a very fun meeting).
Transform: Can you share an interesting fact or piece of trivia about your research process for “How the Future Works”?
Brian: The original research in the book is the product of an amazing research team we worked with for Future Forum, who produced quarterly reports on our survey of ~10k office workers worldwide. As a team, we experimented with new processes and one was related to those research reports, which tended to run over 100 pages.
Adam Grant shared the idea of “brainwriting”— giving people the time to think of solutions to a problem asynchronously. With our research, we adapted that idea and gave the roughly dozen folks working on this access to the report and told them to spend at least two hours, notifications off, jotting down their top five interesting observations. Then we met, compiled everyone’s ideas at once, and sorted through it together.
Some of our most interesting ideas came out that way – no one was filtering out something “different” because it wasn’t where the group was going.
Engagement with Readers
Transform: How do you interact with your readers, especially those who are HR professionals or business leaders?
Brian: Direct interaction with leaders is critically important to me— it’s how I get a sense of current struggles, deeper insights and case studies. I do it through a variety of ways.
Broadly, I post on LinkedIn a fair amount, usually a few times a week, with something that’s pretty in-depth and trying to encourage conversation. It’s hard for many people “in the seat” to do it in public, but it does result in outreach to have a private conversation at times.
I host group conversations, moderate sessions and attend others. You’ll find me in webinars, moderating panels at virtual and “IRL” events, and just attending wherever I can make it work. Special bonus: I was a presenter at the first Transform (still HR Transform back then) in 2018.
I’ve got a list of folks that I love staying connected with across research, consultants and in particular leaders.
Last, maybe not least, I also love connecting people. I don’t do “blind” connections – I’ll ensure both sides want to connect and there’s a purpose. But I just did a count, and in the first half of 2024, I sent out over 90 emails connecting two professionals together who might help each other out – or just commiserate.
Transform: Has feedback from readers ever influenced or changed your perspective on a topic you’ve written about?
Brian: Definitely! Simple example: I no longer list “future of work expert” in my LinkedIn profile headline. It’s good marketing-speak, but it comes off as arrogant. One of the things I’m trying to do is change the minds of people (especially older execs who look like me), and arrogance doesn’t help.
About the Reader:
Transform: Describe what a leader/organization looks like one year after reading “How the Future Works” and committing to its teachings.
Brian: There’s no one right answer to this, just like there’s no one right answer to the “best way to work,” but there are some common themes.
They’ve moved away from policies around work to principles and guidelines. They’ve at least experimented with concepts like team norms (agreements). Their teams are directly engaged in the process of experimenting, interacting, and giving feedback. And they’ve shifted their focus to outcomes-driven management, not monitoring activity.
Hopefully, along the way, they’ve gotten more transparent and maybe a bit more vulnerable themselves as a leader.
Transform: Considering a reader who just finished your book, How the Future Works, and is processing all the great insights, what is the first step they should like to operationalize their learning?
Brian: Talk with your team. Understand the challenges they’re facing, what’s most important to them, and their ideas to make work better.
Meet Brian and join us in engaging conversations and community as we transform the now and next of work together at Transform 2025.