Joe Fuller: Can storytelling inform the general public about economic and social trends? The ongoing transformation of work has simultaneously sparked concern in multiple constituencies and spawned a welter of competing and often contradictory narratives about its causes and implications. How can objective data and constructive ideas reach students, employers, and employees? Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast. I’m Harvard Business School professor and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. Today I’m speaking with Art Bilger. He’s been a success in industries ranging from investment banking to high-tech to media. Art was alarmed by the inadequacy of the response he observed to the threat posed to American workers by forces like automation. His answer was WorkingNation, a nonprofit media production company he founded in 2016. His idea is to tell the stories of groups and individuals whose experiences and programs have the potential to bring about better outcomes for workers of all stripes. With reporting, documentaries, events, and their own podcast, WorkingNation is aiming to inform the many debates raging over the future of work. Art, welcome to Harvard Business School.

Art Bilger: Thank you for having me.

Fuller: Well, we’re delighted you’re here. Art, you’ve been an executive in the tech space, before that in the media space, before that in investment banking. You’ve seen work over the years, and as it’s changed, what inspired you to start WorkingNation?

Bilger: In ’98, entering the tech space really opened my eyes to how fast technology was changing the world in which we live in so many different ways. One of the things was work, how jobs are changing. Another key was—one of the key investment areas that I have pursued since 2002 has been in the area of education technology. So the focus on education, not just K–12 but at all levels, has also been part of what caused me to come together in my head about how fast the world was changing, and what can we do to educate the world as to the changes and the needs they will have going forward.

Fuller: How did that inspire the vision you had for WorkingNation? Because it’s got a very unusual what I’ll call “theory of change” in the market, relying on all sorts of media assets to influence people’s thinking and inform people.

Bilger: Well, as you mentioned, I did spend time in the media world, initially as an investment banker. I became an investment banker for Turner Broadcasting and was deeply involved with the company. That led to other media things—through our private equity fund created the largest Fox affiliate group in the United States. So going back to your question, the fact that we have built this not-for-profit media enterprise to educate the people of this country as to what I believe is the most significant issue we face, it’s not that crazy. I’ve started out with Ted Turner, I worked with Rupert Murdoch.

Fuller: What is that going to bring to the various constituents you’re trying to reach that they didn’t already have access to?

Bilger: In October of '13, I attended a Deutsche Bank dinner and I laid out the beginnings of this idea of a potential significant structural unemployment. Giant fund managers and top corporate executives basically were saying, "I can't believe I've never thought about this." And I said, "Wow, if the big fund managers and the top executives in New York aren't thinking about this, then the average American isn't thinking about it. No wonder we're not getting enough done." In subsequent opportunities where I was speaking to important audiences, I would lay it out, and I’d get the same reaction. So the answer was then I fell back on what I knew so well, and that is: How can you educate millions of people across this country? The media world is clearly one of the mechanisms.

Fuller: So talk a little bit about the type of material WorkingNation’s creating and who are the specific audiences you’re trying to address here.

Bilger: Well first of all, there are three audiences that we’re pursuing. First audience are the equivalent of those same guys around the Deutsche Bank dinner, because if they understood, they can walk into the head of HR and say, “Do you see what XYZ Company’s doing in reskilling of its workers? Why aren’t we doing something like that?” Worst case, they could write a check to a solution. Second audience are those who are working on solutions, and at WorkingNation, we’re focused on solutions at the local level—what corporations are doing, what not-for-profits are doing, what academic entities are doing, and what local governments are doing, and in some cases doing them together. And so the second audience are those who are working on solutions, because they could actually learn from each other. We’ve already seen examples where we’ve told the story of something that was going on in one part of the country, and someone in another part of the country who knew nothing about it reaches out to us and says, “Hey, we could really use that solution in our part of the country.”

Fuller: Can you share an example or two? One thing you see constantly in this space is that you do have really good ideas locally, but they just don’t replicate and scale.

Bilger: Two examples. One is there’s an organization called PHI National, which is in the Bronx in New York. It trains home health care workers. You’re talking about one of the fastest-growing job areas in this country. It’s a very valuable program. When I was ... a while later, I was keynoting the Kaiser Permanente workforce development conference. The health care union in Philadelphia was there. They engaged with me, asked me to come to Philadelphia sometime. They wanted to talk to me about what they’re doing. In that meeting in Philadelphia, at one point I just mentioned the PHI piece, and they said, “Art, you’re not wasting your time.” We knew nothing about PHI. We are now thinking seriously about developing a PHI-type program. Same type of thing happened with an organization called Year Up, where your average billionaire in the Midwest happened to see the piece, reached out to me through a common friend, said, “We could really use Year Up. Can you connect the head of my foundation into the Year Up people?”

Fuller: Gerald Chertavian, who’s been a guest on this podcast.

Bilger: And I said, “Yeah, I probably could do that.” So those are two examples of where exactly that has happened. Anyway, the third audience is just mom and pop and young people across this country. And there, the slope of the curve of change in jobs and skills, when measured against time, has never been so steep. As a result, we can’t wait for whitepapers and conferences to educate the people of this country, in my judgment. Living in today’s digital world, we have the ability to educate them. Today, WorkingNation has millions of views on the stuff that we’re putting up there.

Fuller: Let’s focus on that constituency of parents or other adults who are trying to provide advice to aspiring workers. What sort of messages are you packaging for them? And how are you reaching them? Because, of course, we’re all consumers of media, and we’ve seen the very significant proliferation of channels and different types of devices people are accessing the media through.

Bilger: Well, first of all, we have four different strategies. The first one is video storytelling. The power of a video story actually works across all three of those audiences. It’s not just mom and pop and young people across the country. We tell the story through the people who have gone through these various programs. So our goal is identifying where the jobs of the future will be, and then what are solutions you can associate with and then follow. The example I just gave you on PHI National, home health workers, you’re talking about one of the fastest-growing job areas in this country. And we can’t fill the jobs at the pace that we need. At the other end of the spectrum is the whole area of data analytics jobs. Within the next 10, 15 years, there won’t be an aspect of business, government, or the not-for-profit world that isn’t driven by data analytics. And we have a vacuum in terms of people with the necessary experience in those areas. So we’re really working across the full spectrum of the audience out there. And the video storytelling, in today’s digital world … if we weren’t living in a digital world, I’m not sure I’d be doing this. Waiting around for some producer at some big network to say, “Okay.” But here in today’s digital world, we put up pieces of content across all kinds of different platforms. Right now, the bulk of our viewing comes via YouTube, and our typical piece is close to four minutes long. Now when we’re putting it up, within the first week, we get a few hundred thousand views. And in a four-minute piece, the average viewing is about three and a quarter minutes, which is a pretty big number in the digital world.

Fuller: Yup.

Bilger: And as I said, storytelling, that works for all three of those audiences that I described before. You know, we all watch movies, television, no matter who we are.

Fuller: How do you decide what to produce? Where do you generate your ideas for the content, whether it’s for a video or some other medium?

Bilger: Well, we have researchers, and they know generally what we’re looking for. We have a terrific content team—real experienced producers and journalists—and we want to cover a broad spectrum, and so it’s usually up to them on how they put it in. And they’ve done a terrific job. Now, there are certain themes that we very much want to focus, from day one, we wanted to focus on. Health care. You’re talking about the biggest industry in this country, probably, and lots of changing in the jobs, but lots of opportunity in jobs out there—at the far end of advanced science, to back to the home health care worker, to the world of the not-for-profit employment opportunity. People don’t think about that, but you’re talking about one of the biggest, probably the second biggest industry in this country, data analytics, as I mentioned before. And that’s not just for the most, best-educated people across this country. We did a town hall event, where the first panel were experts from different industries talking about data analytics and the jobs and the need to fill them. And then the second panel were educators. And we had the fellow who runs data analytics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. We also had the president of the community college system. We had a woman out of the Philadelphia high school system. We had a fellow who created a company called General Assembly that works with employees …

Fuller: … teaches the employees code and ... yeah. It sounds like you’re also sponsoring some convenings?

Bilger: We’ve done seven of them now in different cities on different workforce-related issues. And we film all of them for the purpose of future broadcast. One very successful one we did in November of ’17. It was done at the Bush Institute down in Dallas, and that was on veterans’ workforce-related issues. It ended up getting turned into two episodes of a TV series called “Hiring America,” which I believe is broadcast across all military channels, as well as a lot of other channels. As I mentioned, we did the data analytics one in Philadelphia; that one was with the Wharton School. The most recent one was very interesting. We brought together top religious leaders to talk about a wide range of religions, to talk about these issues as they see them in their communities, and to highlight and talk about the linkage between employment and purpose in life. That’s been a major theme of mine for a good while. So those are the town hall events. Third strategy is journalism. So we have journalists that literally write for us and also do a lot of commentary on other stuff out there. And then, finally, the fourth strategy, and that is a podcast strategy.

Fuller: Well, we welcome more learned voices in this space, so we’ll look forward to listening to that, and you joining the ranks. Just don’t cut into our listenership too much, if you don’t mind. You’ve also developed ties to journalists—particularly, I believe, in the newspaper industry—beyond those that you’re working with directly within WorkingNation—through the Poynter Institute. Could you talk a little bit about that and what you’re trying to accomplish?

Bilger: The Poynter Institute is a not-for-profit institute in Florida that works with and trains journalists. They came to us—this was probably June of 2018—and basically said that their feeling is, with a few exceptions out there, the journalists of this country don’t understand these issues that we’re focused on, and could we put together a curriculum to educate journalists? And we said, “Yeah, we could do that.” And we ended up doing that, and then they held a two-day event in September of ’18, late September, where they brought journalists from around the country together from some of the biggest-name networks and all, as well as smaller journalism operations. And it was really like classroom sessions, where our people and some outsiders that we brought in would teach classes all about this. I’ve already started some conversations: How do we take that and maybe consolidate it down to a single day and provide it to other audiences? And I’ve started actually talking to universities, for example, that have journalism schools, “How about we do it for this type of thing for your students?” At one school that I spoke with, they said, “Art, why would we just do it for those students? Why wouldn’t we do it for all undergrads at the university? They’re all at a point in time in their life that they ought to be thinking about these things.” That is on the future roadmap.

Fuller: Let’s talk about the substance of that. Is it about how the workplace is evolving? Is it about the demographics of the labor force today? Is it about income distribution and skills distribution? Or is it everything I’ve just mentioned and more?

Bilger: Probably everything you mentioned and more. The three motivations here that have really driven me and WorkingNation since the beginning—and I used the term earlier—the slope of the curve, as I mentioned, has never been so steep in terms of change in jobs and skills when measured against time. It’s actually the title of the first piece we put up when we officially launched in September 2016, and initially it was on CNN’s platform. People don’t understand how fast this is changing out there, so that’s a key motivation. Second motivation is, this time, it’s about the heart of America, and that’s a piece that people don’t understand out there. If this was just about the bottom 20 percent, I’m not sure if WorkingNation would be necessary. There are plenty of stories, TV documentaries about the bottom 20 percent. Now, it is about the bottom 20 percent, of course; but it’s also about the bottom 20 percent becoming the bottom 30, the bottom 40 percent, the bottom 50 percent. The two examples I’ve used since I started thinking about this was, one, the driverless vehicle. You’re talking about one of the most significant jobs in this country in terms of absolute numbers, and those are middle-class jobs. I don’t know if it’s five years or 10 years, or 15, or 20 years, but those jobs are going to be disappearing. The other example—and I’ve made a number of references to it already—but another example is how a marketing department of 10 will become a marketing department of two because of data analytics. And those eight jobs disappearing are terrific …

Fuller: … good paying jobs …

Bilger: ... white-collar, middle-class, and upper–middle-class jobs. The third motivation is never before have we had to reeducate and reskill people outside of their academic years—their the normal academic years—30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. And that is a phenomenon that’s going to take place. I just don’t believe too many of us are coming out of school, whatever, whenever we finish, and then going into a job, and 35 years later leaving that job, and off to retirement. There are going to be many more changes over the course of time and the re-education, reskilling along the way.

Fuller: What’s the nature of your engagement with employers? We’ve talked to a lot of people about trying to get employers to rethink how they hire or the economics of training, of upskilling. Are you actively cultivating relationships with them and creating media targeted toward them? Or are you relying more on the kind of osmosis of this material, reaching them through different channels and different constituencies?

Bilger: We are searching for those employers who are doing innovative things …

Fuller: … to tell their story.

Bilger: To tell their story. That’s one of the fundamental pillars that we’re building WorkingNation upon. We do the same thing with not-for-profits, same thing with academic entities, same thing with local government. But employers, I believe, really should be the leader in this. One, they’ve got the greatest visibility. They just have to look within their own four walls. Two, they’ve got the greatest need, because if they want to be still in business five years from now, they’d better understand how the changes are going to take place. Three, they also have the greatest resources to throw at it—not just financial resources, but human resources. One of the areas that we talk about since the beginning, the whole idea of apprenticeship programs. Now, many could, but a lot of them aren’t thinking about it, and so that’s why we tell the story of that. So anyway, corporations are a big focus of WorkingNation’s.

Fuller: Now, you’ve run businesses. You’ve invested in businesses. You’ve bought and sold businesses. In each of those instances, you would have been keeping score. You would have had metrics of how we’re measuring the success of this thing, what am I looking for as key indicators. How are you keeping score in what you’re doing at WorkingNation?

Bilger: At the moment, there’s plenty of data in viewership. Then also, in talking with those where we’ve told the story, getting information from them on the reaction that has happened.

Fuller: So Art, you’ve got several initiatives. You’re going to launch a podcast. You’ve been holding these convenings, trying to educate journalists. Where do you see this going over the next five to 10 years? If you fast-forward a little bit, what would you like to see WorkingNation stand for, doing? What kind of activities would you aspire to be doing to influence this debate and bring about change to the country?

Bilger: I am hoping that WorkingNation isn’t the only party talking about all this. So part of the goal here is for us to really get other parties out there who understand these issues and speak about. Now you see headlines about AI and stuff like that, but you hear very little discussed about solutions. You hear about AI and, “Okay. Everyone’s going to lose their jobs.” But very little on the solution side. We’re one of the few. So that’s why we are delighted when the Poynter Institute comes to us and says, “Can you help there?” That’s why we’re delighted we’re starting to get some major media-type parties coming to us with wanting to partner with us and things. We’re being invited to keynote conferences throughout the United States at this point on a very regular basis. So a primary goal here is that WorkingNation isn’t the only one talking about this.

Fuller: Art, our various visitors here have described the problems that WorkingNation is addressing as the biggest threat to US competitiveness that we’re confronting. They’ve described it as the biggest social justice issue in the country. How do you see it?

Bilger: I really see this issue as being the most significant issue facing our nation. It is going to impact everyone if we don’t deal with this properly. Even that well-educated individual who can be on a lifelong learning path, whether it’s more degrees or other forms of education, what’s it like to be employed in a world that has 25 percent, 30 percent, 35 percent, 40 percent unemployment? Now, I believe it’s also the most significant issue facing our nation, because it’s not just the direct economic impact on the population, but it’s also the spinoff moments that take place as a result. An area that I’ve been very focused on is the spike up in recent years in the “anti” movements.

Fuller: What do you mean by that?

Bilger: Turn on the news. The anti-immigration, anti-black, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, and I’m sure there are plenty of other “antis.” Yes, there are bad people out on the edges. No question about that. But I believe what you’re seeing is there are millions of people who aren’t out on the edges, but are in pain. Their attitudes are being influenced. Scapegoats is an example of what frequently happens.

Fuller: Art, one of the leading “antis” that you’ve seen recently is the emergence of an anti-media bias—that if it’s in the popular media, it’s wrong. It’s being delivered by biased journalists in a biased way, that people can purportedly pick their medium to find confirming data of what they already believe. How is WorkingNation trying to avoid that trap?

Bilger: We’re an independent party, and one of the things, one of the principles from day one when we started this up, is I wanted this to be as apolitical as possible. I was actually asked early on to advise presidential candidates who were running in 2016, and I turned all those down. Two reasons: one as I said, I want WorkingNation to be as apolitical as possible. Then two, as I mentioned earlier, the solutions are local.

Fuller: So you’ve been concerned about this area for the better part of a decade, invested in founding WorkingNation. How are you feeling about things? Are we gaining on it? Are you optimistic about the arc of events in terms of preparing people for the future? Are you guarded or are you concerned that we’re losing ground on a fast-moving target?

Bilger: I’m optimistic, but I will say I am ... concerned. And it even motivates me even more right now. Unfortunately, the news cycle in this country has become dominated by …

Fuller: ... other issues.

Bilger: ... other issues. And if it wasn’t, I really think there would be more discussion. I must say when I started this up, I didn’t think that we’d be on this news cycle that we’re on, on such a 24-hour-a-day basis. So I am a little more concerned than I might have been. We’ve got to get people talking about this.

Fuller: Well, Art, thanks for joining us here on the Managing the Future Work podcast and sharing the very interesting story of the growth of WorkingNation, which is one of the more innovative vehicles for influencing the debate on these issues in the US.

Bilger: Thank you for having me.

Fuller: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Managing the Future of Work podcast. To find out more about our project on the future of work, visit our website at hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work.