The 10-Minute Evacuation That Rewired How Google Thinks

When wildfires came within a mile of his California home, Fredrik Vert had 10 minutes to evacuate his family of five. Instead of panic, he chose radical optimism—a decision that would reshape not just how they lived, but how he would help tens of thousands of Google employees think about their futures.

As Google's first Chief Innovation Evangelist for over 12 years, Vert spent his career training people in curiosity, empathy, and experimentation. He helped create the culture behind breakthrough projects like Project Loon and Google Glass, while developing rituals like the 'Penguin Award' to reward risk-taking across the organization.

In this interview, Vert reveals the six-dimensional framework he calls the 'Future Ready Mind'—and explains why most people's strategies for dealing with the future are fundamentally flawed. He shares practical techniques for building radical optimism, breaking out of mental autopilot, and taking control of your future instead of letting it happen to you.

Fredrik: The idea for Your Future Ready Mind really started when I observed many, many people in this world not being able to deal with that uncertainty that the future actually holds, right? And that created a lot of anxiety for people around the future.

One of the experiences I had a couple of years ago really helped me to understand that we have more control of our future than we actually think was when the wildfires happened in California. They came as close as 1 mile to our house. So what we noticed is that police came and gave us an evacuation order. So we had to pack our things in less than 10 minutes and evacuate our house, our family of 5.

What I told my kids and what I told myself is that we cannot control the fires, so our house might be gone or it might be still there when we return, but what we can control is how we respond to that situation. Do we respond with optimism? Do we respond with openness, with curiosity?

All of that really helped us to then start living a life that was very different before the wildfires, a life that is more aligned with nature, where we grow our own food, where we respect nature even more. We were quite optimistic when we left our house, and after 14 days we were able to return back and luckily the house was still there. Our optimism about how to live with the future was also actually increased.

Fredrik: So what I wanted to give people is 3 things. First one is a framework that they can use to really build the future that they want to see happening. The second thing is I wanted to give them stories from individuals that build remarkable futures for themselves. And the third thing is really practices that everybody can use in their own lives to create the dream future they want to see happening.

Fredrik: Hello, my name is Fredrik Vert, and I'm the first and foremost chief innovation evangelist at Google. I'm also the author of a book, What's Next Is Now How to Live Future Ready.

Everybody is interested in their future. What we mostly see is that people think about the future as something abstract, right? But I believe that predictions don't really help when we think about the future. So I want to help people to have a clearer picture about the future by actually imagining it and not just imagining the future, but imagining their future because the future is not something that just happens to you, it's something that you make happen and for most people it's really coming down to that question, how can I create a better future for myself and I want to give people the mind state to really shape the future they want to see happening.

I've been the chief innovation evangelist at Google for about 12.5 years. My role, I was really responsible for shaping the culture of creativity and innovation at Google, really trying to train people in things like curiosity and empathy and experimentation, giving them the right methods and tools and also mind state to really invent a better future. And secondly, shaping the culture, trying to create initiatives in the culture that really brings the values to life that Google stands for values around creativity, having an ambition around the future, but also trying to think 10x and trying to think really bold and big about the future. That was really part of the work.

Fredrik: When you want to create a culture, right, what I really see is that most cultures and organizations have specific values, values like creativity or productivity or community. What I try to do is activate those values through rituals. One of the rituals that I included in our culture at Google was what I call the Penguin Award, because the Penguin Award really rewarded people for taking risks.

And when you take risks, you're really trying to try many things out, right? You're thinking not just bold, but you are acting bold as well, encouraging risk taking through a ritual with the penguin award was something fascinating because for me penguins really stand for taking risks. As you imagine penguins on an ice shelf, many of them, a colony of penguins. There's always one penguin that's the courageous penguin that jumps first into the water. The rest of the colony stands back and really observes that if that little penguin comes back up with food or became food, there is a 50% chance.

And so what I wanted is that when people really jump into the cold water, meaning that they are trying something new, that they are experimenting, that they are taking a risk, that should be rewarded with the penguin award, because we also know that when no one jumps from that ice shelf, no one takes a risk in an organization. The colony of penguins will disappear and so will the organization. So I think it's really important that we build cultures through rituals in every organization. I think everybody is able to do that.

Fredrik: Yes, I think everybody can be that courageous penguin that jumps first into the water in that metaphor. Courage is something that we all have, right, but usually our mind doesn't like to take risks. I think what we can do is instead of waiting for the perfect moment or for perfection, just go for it. Just give it a try and see what happens. And usually what we find is when you take that risk, when you are open to trying something new, you feel rewarded. That creates a very comforting effect as well.

So what I'm practicing myself is trying to not do things twice, right, not to fall into that autopilot that our mind loves to go onto, because that autopilot really creates or saves energy for our mind, and as soon as we get off autopilot and we engage in something new, we take a risk or we try something new. It might be talking to a stranger or it might be trying out a new idea. Our minds need to be activated. That energy, I think, is great because then we see that we're getting off autopilot and we actually are trying something new and then that might lead to an innovation as well.

Fredrik: During my time at Google, I've been able to work with tens of thousands of Googlers and really trying to figure out how do people not just imagine a better future, how do they innovate, how do they use their creativity to really create something better. So in my first couple of weeks, I actually traveled to really many offices, connected with many, many Googlers around the world to really try to understand how do people innovate and what I found is that it's usually not a place that makes a difference. It's also not a specific framework, and it's also not the resources they have access to.

What I found is really in their mind state, what I call a future ready mind state, and that mind state for me has five dimensions. First, it's about radical optimism, thinking not just that the glass is half full, but seeing the potential to fill the glass even further. It's about unreserved openness, being open to many ideas, being open to perspectives, and also being open to change your own perspective as well is really critical because openness is really a supercharger to your personal growth.

The third one is about curiosity, compulsive curiosity, asking those big what if questions that allow you to really think big, and then it's about experimentation, perpetual experimentation, these tiny quick experiments that allow you to really learn quickly as well, because the path to the future is really paved with experiments. And then it's about empathy, not just empathy for other people, but also empathy for your future self. Trying to understand your future needs is really critical. And then the last dimension is dimension X. It's your superpower that allows you to really use whatever your superpower is to create these incredible innovations, to create something new, and to tap into your creativity as well.

So these six dimensions for me really define what I call a future ready mind. And with a future ready mind you can really see more opportunities. You can take control of your future, and you can shape the future that you want to see happening.

Fredrik: I think it's the combination of those dimensions, right? It's not that radical optimism is more important than openness or empathy. I think they are all incredibly important, and the good news is that we all have a certain amount of those qualities of those dimensions in ourselves. We are all to a certain degree open. We are all to a certain degree optimistic. We all like to experiment from time to time, but what I also see is that when we take, for example, curiosity, our curiosity when we grow up goes dormant. That's what studies actually show.

So I want to bring those dimensions back into your life by actually trying to train yourself in curiosity, in openness, in experimentation, and in optimism. And if you train yourself in these things, I guarantee you're going to see more opportunities for yourself, and you're going to take control of the future that you want to actually see happening.

Fredrik: So I've been able to work with many organizations ranging from the UN to the German Soccer Association, and many, many more, including startups, and what I've seen is that let's take curiosity. Startups really use their curiosity to explore something new. They are the best in asking good questions and trying to really reimagine what is possible. When organizations grow older, what we see is that curiosity is usually replaced with scaling or other things that they want to focus on.

Two things I've tried when it comes to training people innovation and creativity was first, to help them to train specific things like empathy, expansive thinking, or experimentation. And the second thing is what we tried is we built environments where people really could reduce that friction from having an idea to building your first prototype. And the garage that I founded was one of those places where a lot of Googlers came together to try out some ideas, to really start to push the boundaries on some of those ideas and really start to learn quickly how things work and what works and what doesn't work. So it's really a space around experimentation.

We had projects like Project Loon was created, those stratospheric balloons to really provide internet around the world. Antennas and some of the balloon parts were actually prototyped in the garage and experimented with. What I found is that also Google Glass, for example, was launched out of the garage, a project where we invited people to test out this service a couple of years ago and prototype it and experiment with it, right?

So I think for me it was really critical that we take an approach to innovation that is based on experimentation and empathy and expansive thinking, those three elements that really allow you to not just imagine ideas but really build ideas that are meaningful to people that are based on radical new ideas, but also that are tried out so that we can start learning what works and what doesn't work.

Fredrik: Innovation doesn't happen by itself, right? It's something where you have to train people in, but also you have to create a culture and an environment where innovation can actually happen. Those two elements are very critical, right? Trying to provide the right training for people so that they can literally train their mind on how to innovate, how to imagine and how to think expansively and so forth. And at the same time finding a culture where this is actually possible with initiatives like the Penguin Award that I just shared as well that allows people to take more risks. So combining those two things where you train people into innovation and you build a culture around innovation is really critical and that was the main focus of my work.

Fredrik: What I felt is that when it comes to the future, for example, and innovation, sometimes we see that our mind creates 4 strategies that really is not really helpful, but it's just a natural, very human thing that evolves when we think about the future.

The first thing is that we have anxiety about the future. Sometimes we think about the future as not desirable, as something that just happens to us, that is not in our control, and that creates anxiety, right?

The second thing is that sometimes we think we just wait until the future happens. So we wait until something in our lives happens and then we start to act.

The third thing is that sometimes we think the future is owned by others, right? So we think that our partners, our managers, or our leaders, or the government or politicians or whatever it is are owning the future and creating the future, and I think that's not true.

And the fourth one is that sometimes we just want to deny the future. We want to bring back the past. We want to say like, oh, you know, past times have been better, and all of those arguments.

So having that anxiety, waiting for the future, thinking that others own the future, and denying the future are four things that really are not helpful, right, because I think everybody has the opportunity to shape their own future and have control over their own future.

Fredrik: I think there's 3 things that I want to share. First one is trying to really imagine your future and make that a practice every day. Maybe the first 60 seconds in the morning or the first 3 minutes in the morning, trying to really just close your eyes for a moment and trying to imagine your future self, trying to see a clearer picture of where you're going to be in the future a year from now, for example, who you're going to be surrounded by and what are you doing? And then the fourth critical element is how do you feel in that future and what do you want to feel in this future as well. Very important practice that everybody can do every morning or throughout the day to really build that muscle of imagination, your future self.

The second thing I recommend doing is if you want to turn into a more optimistic person. There are some interesting studies that show that if you write down things in the evening and that can be on your phone or it can be on a piece of paper that really brings up the 3 things that you're grateful for throughout the day that you think that went well, that are the positives in your day, and that could be small things. Note down 3 things every day. After 21 days, your mind actually changes and looks for the more positive things in your life as well, and I think that's a very easy practice that everybody can do.