I'm always excited to hear from the likes of Pippa, elite practioners who have earned the respect of the most respected high performers in the world.

Pippa has a new book out, Life Reclaimed, which is a reflection on burnout, the need for overperformance and how to achieve balance in life. It's partly informed by her work with some of the most talented people in the world and certainly bears the trace of her own experiences with burnout.

She also previews the BBC TV adaptation of Dear England featuring a character based on her.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This conversation (and the papers that led into it) were real penny drop moments for me.

There's a full transcript on the website.

Check out more:

We spend a lot of time talking about Katrien’s paper: The impact of identity leadership on team functioning and well-being in team sport: Is psychological safety the missing link?

We also discuss Unlocking the Power of ‘Us’: Longitudinal Evidence that Identity Leadership Predicts Team 5 Functioning and Athlete Well-Being

Her website focuses on the services that she and her colleagues provide for organisations.

Katrien is the co-author (alongside former guest Alex Haslam and Filip Boen) of The New Psychology of Sport and Exercise: The Social Identity Approach

Here's Rob Briner's post about psychological safety being hard to reproduce on demand.

More about Professor Katrien Fransen

I talk about a podcast featuring the boat race, you can check that out here.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laker is Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, which is part of the University of Reading. As well as writing multiple bestselling books on work like Too Proud to Lead and Job Crafting, he's also published dozens of articles in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. He's worked with government helping to develop policy on work and it's evolution.

I could have chatted to Benjamin about dozens of things but I specifically wanted to dive into a sensational piece he wrote in Harvard Business Review at the end of last year about changing culture inside of organisations.

Full transcript on the website

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We talk attention, community and the way that great teams demonstrate 'group flow'. We also delve into some research by Nick Epley that I've covered on the newsletter, that suggests we're terrible at predicting what will make us happy.

If you like this check out the previous episodes with Daniel:

Dan Coyle can fix your broken culture

The Culture Code

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's an intriguing list, is a car wash really better than some of the most famous tech brands in the world?

The ranking allows us to explore what we want in a job: culture, connection, progression and autonomy.

Bad culture is 7 times more powerful driving quitting than salary: hear Charlie and Donald Sull talk about Glassdoor data

Glassdoor: Top US places to work

Glassdoor: Top UK places to work

Full transcript on the website

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin Green is the Chief People Officer for First Group.

He's set about reinventing the culture of the organisation from the ground up.

I heard Kevin speak at an event last year was completely bowled over by the way he talked about culture and the way he was trying to build it. I think you'll love this discussion. There's a full transcript on the website.

Also mentioned: Waitrose culture episode with Lord Mark Price

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Her perspective is to use psychology to understand the person in front of you to interpret the world through their eyes. If you’ve got a controlling boss or someone who behaves in a way that impacts your life she helps you unpick what’s going in their head. 

The Relationship-Driven Leader: Strengthening Connections to Enhance Productivity and Wellness at Work 

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

That's the finding of the Edelman Gen Z Lab as told to me by the leader of the project Jackie Cooper. Most powerfully she explains that Gen Z's have a 'visceral need for safety' - that's financial, social, cultural and even physical.

They respond to fear by asking questions and wanting to be heard, which older generations often misread as entitlement or disrespect for hierarchy.

Politically, Gen Z is fragmented. Younger Gen Zs, especially boys/young men, are leaning more conservative and drawn to strong-man archetypes; older Gen Zs, shaped by Obama / BLM, are more idealistic about progressive politics. Algorithms and “TikTok-isation” amplify those splits.

I was blown away to see Jackie Cooper from Edelman talk about the research that the company has done to understand the new generation of workers entering the workplace - I think you'll love this discussion.

You can read the report here

Full transcript on the website.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They have a new book out The Art of Less. Andre has been a guest a few times before - way back in 2018. This podcast is old. In 2018 this podcast was ahead of Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO at the top of the podcast charts. (Andre talking about open plan offices)

The idea that much of what companies do is related to their self identity, what the company aspires to be in the world - with the end result that it doesn’t achieve these things.

Things we discuss:

• 'The Death of the Corporate Job'
• how 'initiative-itis' is dragging down organisations
• how training is corporate sludge that doesn't achieve its goals
• corporate culture as an act of 'grandiosity'

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is the third part of a series about the power of identity in teams. Listen to the other Eat Sleep Work Repeat episodes about identity.

Jeremy posting about identity

Watch the Lebron documentary More Than a Game

Jeremy's book For the Love of the Game

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can hear the first part of this interview on the website.

In this discussion we talk how social identity can help us understand leadership.

Alex talks about the CARE model of leadership.

C - Create the group

A - Advance the group (sometimes over themselves)

R - Represent the group

E - Embed the group identity in everyday life for the group

If you're interested in exploring Alex's recent contributions to discussions on leadership and culture these papers are a great place to start:

• Zombie Leadership
• Human Me-sources or Human We-sources - exploring leader narcissism

Alex Haslam is Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Queensland. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on group dynamics, leadership, and identity. Over the past three decades, Alex has helped reshape our understanding of how people think, feel, and behave as members of groups, and why social identity is central to motivation, resilience, and effective teamwork.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Why are we so fixated on the individual self? I think it was a big con. The individual self is a relatively modern invention. The idea that human psychology is about the individual self was really an analytical fiction that was devised in the 20th century.”

This is the first part of a wide-ranging discussion with Professor Alex Haslam. He talks us why our group identities are so essential to us and define who we are as adults. He quotes his mentor John Turner who said, 'Social identity is what makes group behaviour possible'. By the time you've finished with this episode I'm sure you'll agree.

Check out an utterly brilliant talk by Alex - consider this the best training you could send yourself on.

Alex mentions his partner Cath Haslam, who is also a psychologist.

Full transcript and notes are on the website - along with an Identity playlist of episodes.

Alex Haslam is Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Queensland. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on group dynamics, leadership, and identity. Over the past three decades, Alex has helped reshape our understanding of how people think, feel, and behave as members of groups, and why social identity is central to motivation, resilience, and effective teamwork.

Alex is co-author of The New Psychology of Leadership and The New Psychology of Sport and Exercise, and his work has been applied widely—from health and education to business, politics, and the military. With over 300 research articles and multiple international awards to his name, Alex is recognised as a pioneer of social identity theory in practice, showing how a sense of “us” can unlock extraordinary human potential.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• The Loneliness of the American Worker - Wall Street Journal
• Make Work Better on loneliness
• More on solving loneliness
• Loneliness in teams
• Derek Thompson on elective isolation

Professor Simon Gilbody is a psychiatrist and clinical epidemiologist at the University of York. His work specialises in 'taking a population approach to mental health', trying to understand the aspects of modern life that contribute to how we feel.

I was impressed by a talk that Simon did with the Financial Times on the topic of workplace loneliness.

In our discussion Simon reflects on the toll of loneliness, how workplace loneliness can leave us with invasive thoughts, and what to do about it.

Some links we discuss:

Dr Lucy Foulkes - I really enjoy her TikToks, I think I gave a shout out to her book on adolescents a few weeks ago.

Red Cross Report on Loneliness

Thank you to Mary Howarth at University of York for helping to arrange the discussion.

Transcript on the website

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spencer Walker is the global director of Deliveroo for Work.

The podcast has returned several times to the idea of food as a cultural trigger, something that catalyses connection and allows cohesion. We explore that idea further this week with Spencer Walker who runs Deliveroo For Work the workplace service provided by the delivery firm.

The Deliveroo Feeding Employee Engagement Report

I mention a book by Robin Dunbar and Samantha Rockey, it's this: The Social Brain - Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, Robin Dunbar. They talk about giving curry to bond teams (because the sharing plates require people to pass them around). Hear them talking about it here.

Deliveroo for Work

The Deliveroo Feeding Employee Engagement Report

More about food, rituals and culture 

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TikTok is a fame machine and if creators drop a banger they can end up reaching a vast audience. Nick has posted some content about work, neurodiversity and philosophy that has had millions of views.

It was his take on why middle aged men wanted to return to the office that I put in the newsletter last week and made up the reason why we chatted but there’s so much more to this - not least him talking about adaptive behaviours and masking for people on the spectrum.

Great listen. If you don’t use TikTok then I’ve given a selection of his best posts below:

Nick on LinkedIn

Shackleton Consulting

Nick on TikTok - this is the good stuff

Best posts to check out:

• Middle aged men don't get on with their wives
• The original on middle aged men
• What I miss about corporate
• More of what he misses about corporate (on company values)
• Adaptive processes for neutrodivergent people
• Pedestrian bell
• Chase difference

Get the newsletter here

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm joined by Colin Fisher who explains that great teams are the most important contributors to great outcomes at work. The problem is that for many of our teams they are equal to less than the sum of the parts. Groups get bigger and bigger and stop being effective. Managers avoid having discussions about trimming teams down - and it leads to failure.

Colin's new book The Collective Edge breaks down the ingredients of forming good teams.

Colin Fisher is a professor at UCL School of Management

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I chatted to Susan Carruth, a partner a 3XN, an architecture firm who is pioneering thinking about the needs of occupants and Mike Wiseman Head of Campuses at British land.

For more details on the 2FA project mentioned and British Land's campuses.

As discussed: 12% of US mortgage backed office deals are 'delinquent' right now

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Typically these five factors are regarded as a statistically reliable way to measure personality. Unlike approaches like Myers Briggs these factors prove consistent over time and psychologists took a view that much of the variance of human personality can be understood using these factors. Interestingly these factors also prove predictive for other outcomes. Conscientiousness for example predicts academic success and job performance, neuroticism can predict mental health issues.

To discuss it I'm joined by Nick McClelland, Nick is the CEO of Byrne Dean

The original article by John Burn Murdoch (archive version)

Newsletter discussion on the data

Discussion between John Burn Murdoch and Derek Thompson

Christopher Ferguson questions the effect size

Jay Van Bavel talks about the effect size of the data

Alex Haslam points out the questions that lead to the conscientiousness scores

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A couple of years ago, I was surrounded with so many happy Spurs fans that I bought into the euphoric buzz they were giving off.

Ange Postecoglou had brought the smile back to Tottenham supporters.

I chatted to Charlie Eccleshare from The Athletic about the cultural reinvention that the Australian manager that enacted.

Reader, the Big Ange story didn't end well as a result a lot of fans of other clubs regularly message me asking about the episode, or my opinion of Postecoglou's demise. It was while I was joking about this one time that today's guest got in touch.

Dan Jackson is a former Aussie Rules footballer who now acts as General Manager at Adelaide Football Club. He got in touch suggesting that I might be unfair backtracking on the support of Ange, challenging me to reflect on 'how the world's premier football competition has such little respect for building genuine high-performance culture?'

He said 'I'm sure you'd agree it takes time and a lot of focused effort to change and build a good culture - two things that don't appear to be given any focus in most EPL teams'.

I loved the pushback and immediately got in touch to have a conversation with him. We talk both about Postecoglou (and whether we did him dirty) but also about how he is part of a team that tries to build strong long-term culture in his team.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was delighted to get the chance to talk to the CEO of Octopus Energy Group, Greg Jackson. I’ve often reflected that the best cultures seem to be codified and made explicit, but Octopus’s culture isn’t really defined by formal values, Jackson doesn’t pin it down to three or four words. Instead the culture has a vivid feeling but is loosely articulated, a tangible mix of trust, autonomy and a shared mission.

Cultures are often defined by what they’re against as much as what they are for. Many companies give a laundry list of desirable attributes they strive for. There’s an organisation at the end of my street that has ‘excellence’ and ‘respect’ on its windows, but would any business claim to be built on mediocrity or disrespect? Aren’t they just given? Sometimes these things are called the Pillars of Character. Yes, we have integrity here, but how does that help you work here?

For businesses these pillars are useless for creating differentiation. Jackson’s approach at Octopus stands apart from that, he takes issue with common norms elsewhere. Researching for the conversation I listened to one interview where Jackson talked about the absence of back-to-back meetings in his day. He said:

First of one thing I do that I think is unusual is I don't pack my day with meetings. I'm religious about having lots of time outside meetings because in the one hour that someone wants to have a meeting, I can make 10 phone calls or I could drop by the desks of half a dozen team members and I can be available for people to deal with what's going on that day. So one thing for me is your time is far too precious to let it get soaked up on other people's meeting requests. It's quite funny when I got a new PA, she came from a very large software company and I said, ‘I've got a lot of meetings tomorrow’. And she said, well, where I used to work, my job was to pack from 8 AM to 5 PM every day, hour by hour by hour. And I was like, Whoa, how does that person get any thinking time? How does it get any, any time to reset? And how does it get to do anything proactive that changes the world?

After the conversation, which was recorded live on stage near Guildford, someone came up to me. ‘My son works at Octopus,’ he said. Here we go, I thought. ‘Every single word he said up there is true. He says he wishes he’d joined there years ago’.

Links:

Greg on High Performance podcast

Transcript

Make Work Better newsletter

Take a listen, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two weeks ago I went along to a huge event run by Workday down in North Greenwich. Workday, their partners and their customers took to the stage to talk about applications of AI that are coming to their platform. As part of the event I was able to run a discussion with a couple of voices from the company who are helping businesses navigate the challenges that AI presents to us. 

Sign up for the newsletter

More about Workday Elevate

I was joined by Jerry Ting. Jerry is the founder of Evisort and now teaches at Harvard Law School and is a senior leader at Workday. And the other contributor was Angelique de Vries Schipperijn, she's the EMEA president for Workday. The conversation was fascinating for me in a few ways, firstly we can be so daunted about what AI represents in our jobs and this seemed simple and easy to understand, but secondly because as I mentioned last week the conversations I got from the audience suggested that there’s a lot of businesses who have barely started their own journeys.

Look, here’s the challenge of the moment, I think the conversation at the event described a future that we have the agency to participate in. It seems real and like something we can connect with, but also everyone who came up to me afterwards anxiously told me that their organisations are doing nothing at all. That’s why I got so much value from this conversation. I think inverted commas “doing AI” feels scary and huge whereas incorporating it into some of the things we’re already going feels possible and easily achievable. 

 I need to declare that this is a promoted episode in the sense that Workday is a client that I was working with at this event and have worked with before, but critically it was a conversation that I’m delighted to be sharing here. 

I want to give a shout out to Hollie Benneyworth at Workday who has worked so hard to make this happen.

You can find a full transcript for this on the website.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First of two episodes going deep on how AI is going to impact work - and therefore workplace culture and dynamics.

This week is with Alexia Cambon from Microsoft. Alexia is Head of Research on Copilot & Future of Work. Last month her team released the Work Trend Index Annual Report. It’s one of the most important pieces of insight into how our jobs will change. Their previous reports have been interesting going deep into how people are experimenting with AI but this year’s is different. It articulates a version of work that most of us aren’t yet ready for.

P&G research: Having an AI assistant doubles a worker’s output, proving as effective as having a real teammate

Alexia mentioned that the research was performed by Karim R. Lakhani. The paper itself.

Conor Grennan

Jaime Teevan

More about marathoner Katherine Switzer

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I chatted to Howard Lerman this week. I was blown away by this discussion - it captured exactly what is wrong about current work, and why back-to-back meetings are going to lead to many organisations missing the opportunity of this vital moment.

This is an essential listen - about where work is imminently going and how Howard's philosophy is building his fascinating new product Roam to serve the company of the future.

Explore Roam, follow Howard.

Read all about the way that work is about to change in the newsletter

The AI 2027 predictions are the wake up call we didn't know we needed

Microsoft explains why we need to ready ourselves for the reinvention of work

Konstantine Buhler on 'always on'

Full transcript on the website

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Read a full transcript and notes on the website.

Read more : Wall Street Journal: The Power of Mattering at Work

Order the book: The Power of Mattering

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Read Meaningful Work

Read the latest newsletter

There’s some overlap - the authors today,Tamara Myles and Wes Adams, have done research with next week’s guest Zach Mercurio. One of today’s guests Tamara Myles said one of the most powerful questions you can ask to measure engagement at work is to ask ‘does your manager care about what is going on in your life?’

Today is about meaning, and I feel it gets to grips with questions of purpose. Why sometimes purpose doesn’t seem to create an impact in an organisation - and other times really makes it hum.

The authors describe meaningful work as work that provides community, helps us contribute to something that matters, and challenges us to learn and grow.

For full show notes go to the website.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Someone posted on LinkedIn that the podcast had died. Or I had died. But he is risen! I'm back with a great discussion, powerful in its simplicity.

Psychologists Dr. Patricia Grabarek and Dr. Katina Sawyer have created a guidebook for anyone who wants to make things better for their teams. In it they suggest that managers need to set the tone for our colleagues. Yes, of course I hear you say but it's so often something that the hectic buzz of work distracts us from.

As workplace wellness is in decline they suggest that it's time for managers to step up and be the creators of great culture, even if that might be pushing against the tide.

Leading for Wellness is out now.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Interested in how skills could enhance your business? Check out the short film I made with the Department for Education.

Get in touch with Bruce

What do your typos say about you?

What's the right medium to build connection with your colleagues?

How did Shopify and Netflix reinvent their communication?

How can any of us navigate a bulging calendar and overloaded inbox?

Professor Andrew Brodsky gives us a field guide to communications and tells how we should be rethinking how we message.

Andrew's new book Ping is out in February.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sign up for the newsletter

Today's episode is an Avengers Assembled of podcasts about work. I join host Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis from the Squiggly Careers podcast, as well as Isabel Berwick from the FT's Working It and Jimmy McCloughlin from Jimmy's Jobs.

We talk AI, asking payrises, RTO and much more.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He explains that humans are inspired by peer codes, human codes and ancestor codes when it comes to their behaviour - and he gives plenty of insight of how we could build more tightly bonded groups in our own teams.

Make Work Better: Resisting the Enshittification of Work in 2024

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The last time President Trump was in power it led to employees becoming more active - who knows if the same will happen in 2025.

Karthik Ramanna talks us through the way to deal with outrage - and the actions that any leader can take to make the workplace a better place. His new book is out now.

More about the Edelman Trust index

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tiffany Gaskell outlines coaching as a route to transformational leadership

Tiffany Gaskell is the co-author of Coaching for Performance, the top-selling guide to coaching first published by Sir John Whitmore the inventor of the discipline.

It's curious to consider that there was a founder of coaching, and Tiffany takes me through the history of the practice, how it took hold and where it is today.

There's a key consideration about the modern manager given to us by the Gallup Global Workplace Report, 80% of those who are engaged with their jobs say they've received direct feedback from their manager in the last week.

This is a powerful insight but also poses a huge challenge - how can any of us find the time to observe and then feedback to every worker in our team. Tiffany explains that this is where a culture of coaching comes in, transferring the burden of observation from the manager to facilitating a socratic questioning approach.

You can follow Tiffany on LinkedIn and the book is out now.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brigid Schulte is a journalist and writer who brings a reporter's ear for stories to her exploration of modern work.

Over the course of a decade Schulte has talked to people about the impact their jobs has on their lives - and has explored any hope that we might be able to make this better.

Her new book, Over Work and paints a hopeful image of how we might fix the toxic elements of our jobs.

One of the examples is about Intel, who in 2013 experimented with a new initiative styled Freelance Nation to bring some of the upsides of gig work to a professional knowledge work environment. It proved hugely successful and yet they decided to scrap it.

Buy Over Work

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sign up for the newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can any of us build a more effective team?

Owen Eastwood is one of the world’s most in demand performance coaches, with a focus on team culture & leading. Owen has worked with some of the most successful sporting sides in the world. He also works with corporate teams wrestling with similar themes.

Last year I talked to Owen about his work on belonging and identity but I wanted to pick his brains on the biggest challenge for modern leaders - how to build a stronger team.

Buy Belonging

Follow Owen on LinkedIn

Owen talks me through his step-by-step approach to building better teams - starting with the toughest starter question that most teams never tackle.

takeaways

• Determine whether a team is necessary for the desired outcome
• Clearly define roles and expectations within the team
• Recruit talented individuals who can contribute to the team's success
• Establish effective communication channels within the team
• Consider the challenges of being part of multiple teams in the corporate world Individuals have a choice in shaping the team's identity and should be selfless and committed to the team's purpose and desired outcome.
• A high-performing team is one where individuals consistently perform at their best and have a culture of excellence.
• The environment plays a crucial role in enabling or disabling team success, and teams should create an environment that fosters innovation and energizes individuals.
• Teams should regularly reflect on their environment and identify and eliminate factors that hinder performance.

For a full transcript see the website.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How important is a happy workforce? According to Mark Price, the former boss of Waitrose, it's the main thing that leaders should be thinking about. Make your workforce happy and the profits will follow. Mark's new book is Happy Economics.

To prove it Mark cites his experience running the supermarket chain, when with a goal of workers happiness he made it the fastest-growing, most profitable supermarket in the UK.

The original purpose of the John Lewis Partnership, as laid out by the very same John Lewis , was to uphold the happiness of the people who worked inside the organisation.

Mark's new book is Happiness Economics. Mark's book makes the assertion that the quickest way to business success is to focus on creating happy employees.

This is genuinely a brilliant listen - and one that you might benefit from reading the transcript of - you can get the transcript here.

While I got real value from the book, I actually found the conversation even more enlightening. It challenged some things I believed and I found myself reflecting on it for the day afterwards. I think there’s a clarity in the conversation that the book lacks at times - I think it’s the challenge of books to be honest. We’re so used to ideas being visually backed up that when we’re paging through 200 pages of words the emphasis is often lost. Maybe they work best together.

Mark has a clear 6 stage framework for making a happy, productive workforce laid out in his compelling new book Happiness Economics.

• Reward and recognition
• Information sharing
• Empowerment
• Wellbeing
• A sense of pride
• & Job satisfaction

Mark's company is WorkL. You can take their surveys and see their data on that link.

Key takeaways

• The happiness of employees is crucial for driving productivity and increasing profits
• Managers play a vital role in creating a positive work environment and should focus on training, recognition, and coaching
• Leadership should involve setting a clear plan, making employees feel valued and important, and maintaining optimism about the future.
• Well-being initiatives should go beyond tokenistic measures and address underlying issues in the work culture. Employee happiness is crucial for workplace culture and productivity.
• The six key drivers of happiness at work are reward and recognition, empowerment, sense of pride, line management, career development, and job satisfaction.
• Implementing these drivers effectively can lead to improved well-being, productivity, and business performance.
• Building a positive culture is essential, and companies should focus on measuring and improving employee happiness.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You might think an episode about improv comedy might be a stretch for a podcast about making work better. But in fact as Kelly Leonard explains today the skills of improv comedy are the most important ones that will determine our success at work. 

Kelly helps to run Second City, the world's famous famous improv comedy club - he believes that improv skills can teach us about what we need in work going forwards.

** TRIGGER WARNING ** includes one brief mention of poetry

Check our Kelly's book

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 2000s a book called Fish! A remarkable way to boost morale and improve results became a bestseller. A small book, it was often used by companies accompanying a video of the same name. Together the two told a story of the culture of the fish market in Seattle, a noisy, bombastic place, but a place that was filled with joy. I first encountered Fish when a firm came to pitch to me when I was working in publishing. They told me that their culture was Fish. 

There are a few things that stood out from it. The idea of intentionally designing culture isn’t new but this seemed to be explicitly linking culture, emotion and mood. 

There were 4 principles of Fish

• Play
• be there
• make their day
• choose your attitude

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the second episode about rituals - the first one is next to it in the podcast feed, it's an interview with Kursat Ozenc about how rituals can be used to create culture. This episode goes into real life examples.

Claudia Wallace talks about Crisp Thursday (Connection)

Andy Puleston talks about Pizza Meetings (Connection) and Leaving Speeches (Change)

Dan Pink talks about Friday Night Experiments (Creativity)

Biz Stone talks about Hack Week at Twitter (Creativity)

Dr Heidi Edmondson talks about Ten at Ten (Performance)

Heidi has a wonderful new book out - Darkness in the City of Light

You can also hear the original episodes that each of these extracts came from by click the links above. I have to say that those whole episodes are worth revising. For example, Andy Puleston talks about how effective the culture was at Radio 1 when it was a series of affiliated tribes and he articulates the role that buildings play in shaping cultures. Each episode teaches something special.

 Andy Puleston is now Director of People & Culture at Circulor, an award winning technology business.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kursat Ozenc is a product designer who he teaches at Stanford university, He teaches on the subject that we can all learn from which is the idea that culture can be designed. The specific tool he uses to design culture is the creation of workplace rituals. 

Kursat's Substack newsletter

Kursat's first book is here and the second, on virtual meetings is here.

The reading list for Kursat's course is here

Kursat’s book includes the suggestions that: ‘The rituals in our life show what we care about’. Critically then creating rituals demonstrate what our culture values.

Kursat gives five use cases for rituals: 

1. For change
2. Creativity
3. Performance
4. Conflict
5. Community

If you like this episode you'll also like the episode that accompanies it - which goes into depth about specific rituals that companies have used. Listen to that episode here.

A full transcript of the episode is at the website.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Presence is to be in a flow state of connection with others.

Here’s the last discussion about the Happiness Track

Sign up for the newsletter

Emma’s new book Sovereign

HBR: The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive Energy

HBR: Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive

Today is the first of series of podcasts about an idea that needs more consideration in our workplaces. The idea of presence.

Emma Seppala is a psychologist and lecturer at the Yale School of Management – she also runs the Women’s Leadership program there. I first spoke to Emma about 6 years ago when I came across her book the Happiness Track. The hypothesis of that book was in many ways the sweet spot of this podcast: the notion that if you make workers happy then they do their better work. Emma had a new book out this week called Sovereign and it felt like a great reason to have a new conversation. 

The conversation leads into the next block of podcasts which are all about the idea of presence. Over the last 4 years we’ve seen discourse from CEOs about wanting workers back in the office but in many ways they’re putting things the wrong way wrong. A lot of us find ourselves making our way into work and sitting on video calls all day. Or having headphones on because its so noisy. We got home at the end of the day thinking ‘what was the point of that’. 

When bosses say they want us to be present in the office, what they actually describe is something different. They talk us about us interacting, having ideas, watercooler moments. Bosses say they want us to be present in the office, but what they really want is presence, for us to be in each others company.

For me presence is related to flow

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s top episode goes to the heart of an issue that a lot of people raise with me.

They say ‘where do you start when changing a culture’.

To some extent it’s what the episode about the hospital trust in Barking was about, going in and changing the culture of a huge organisation.

I saw one of today’s guests Darren Ashby speak at an event - talking through the specifics of how his company Business Four Zero tried to change the culture of Tesco. Business Four Zero are one of a group of organisations who work with leaders to change company culture. I know there’s a few of these firms. I attended a dazzling event by one firm called Scarlett Abbot in this field about a month ago. 

Darren is joined by Atif Sheikh as they talk through the specifics of what they did with firms like Electronic Arts, Aviva and Tesco. They’ve turned some of their work into a book which you can buy here.

Some of the things that stood out for me:

• What’s the number one thing you look for in a high performing culture? How internal are they? How much time are they spending on themselves vs the outside world?
• Only 28% of workers say they are connected to purpose
• Culture is what are you committed to as group - emotional commitment of what you want to create
• Values - before you define your values know that there are 6 core values shared amongst everyone (sometimes called the 6 Pillars of Character - Trust, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship). These should not be your differentiator. These are universal basic expectations. You need to define something differentiating
• Leaders' role is to bring energy: Satya Nadella told Microsoft’s execs: ‘find the rose petals in the field of sh*t’
• So how do you elevate a culture? They introduce 2 or 3 critical behaviours that elevate a culture Might be ‘be kinder’ And they build a process of how you might enact those behaviours

For example Intercontinental Hotel Group

• Had switched from being a hotel owner to a franchise business
• CEO needed to remove silos
• What did they need? Too many people in the business didn’t understand how they made money - it made spending decisions hard. So they focussed on ‘think return’
• Additionally it had become complacent, so they decided to ‘move fast’
• Finally they agreed to ‘talk straight’ with each other

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(here’s her specials on the 4-day week for example, or her special on meeting-free days was essential listening). I love its ability to react rapidly to the biggest news stories of the moment and to drop a snackable episode midweek.

I talked to her about her opinions on modern work, going deep on the rapidly changing world of employment and where we’re going next.

Isabel has a brand new book out, The Future Proof Career, which she says is for everyone who doesn’t read books about work but wants to be better at navigating it.

Recent episodes you might have missed

• The importance of trust at work - and why it's on the decline
• Charles Duhig on how to be a supercommunicator in your job (and your home life)
• Can improvements to culture fix a broken NHS trust?
• The Big Ange effect at Tottenham Hotspur
• Frances Frei on the importance of training managers

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first spoke to Emma Bridger, who is the author of a well respected book on this topic and the founder of the EX Space, a learning community focussed on raising the bar in the Employee Experience field.

Then I picked the brains of Melanie Wheeler who leads People Communications at Sutherland, a firm widely recommended to me as outstanding in Employee Experience.

Get in touch

Sign up for the newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

His new book, Supercommunicators, grapples with the knotty topic of creating successful interactions with others.

It’s a thorough and dazzling read that has many applications for the way we work (and how we live our lives).

We talked about:

• the single biggest thing that builds psychological safety
• why moving conversation out of small talk into deep discussion proves more satisfying than we expect
• how teams should use 'who are we' conversations
• how we should think about three different types of conversation (are they looking to be helped, hugged or heard?

Read an extract of Charles' book here

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Uri Gneezy is the world's foremost expert on the science of incentives - and he comes with a huge warning about what such schemes actually achieve.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is today hosted by Bruce Daisley, Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook.

Sign up to the newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roll up roll up as this week we talk the major trends in work and workplace culture and the big stories of the last month.

Including:

• Wellness programs don’t work - in TikTok form, or in Matt’s post on LinkedIn Research from Oxford University looking at the (in)effectiveness of workplace wellbeing interventions at an individual level
• Chronoworking 
• Gymclassgate
• Ellen on Gen Z workers
• Fewer and fewer of us want to go out in the evenings or weekends
• The dystopian prospect of AI interviews

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was an inspiring question that CEO Matthew Trainer was asking: 'can we improve the results by making it a better culture?'

What does that look like? And how is going for them?

Matthew Trainer's CEO note at the end of 2023

Video: Inside the Trust

Fill in the form: Consider my firm for a future podcast

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Slack’s August 2023 survey of over 10,000 global office workers, trust was the top determinant of employees’ productivity scores. Employees who felt trusted were 2X as productive as those who didn’t. They were 30% more likely to put in extra effort at their jobs. If we don’t feel trusted we’re twice as likely to say we’re looking for

a new job.

But what role does trust play in the modern company? And how can we build it?

Mark McGinn is a senior leader at the communications agency Edelman, he talks to me about their research into trust and how we should seek to build it.

Has our organisation replaced government? Increasingly our company is the biggest thing that we believe we can have an impact on.

Mark explains that Trust in our organisation is based on four things:

• Organisational ability
• Dependability
• Integrity
• Purpose

You'll strongly enjoy downloading Edelman's Trust Barometer and also Edelman's special Trust at Work report.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When we look at the research from Gallup about burnout and why people hate their jobs managers are regarded as having the biggest responsibility. Half of people who say they don't rate their manager say they are looking for jobs. So what can we do to make our relationship with our managers better? I chatted to Anthony Painter from CMI.

Download the Work Trends deck

Chartered Management Institute research on the Accidental Manager

• 82% of workers entering management positions have not had any formal management and leadership training
• only a quarter of workers (27%) describe their manager as ‘highly effective’
• of those workers who do not rate their manager, half (50%) plan to leave their company in the next year

Full transcript on the website

Follow Anthony on LinkedIn

Follow Anthony on Twitter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We talk through the hottest topics in work:

• New research says that bosses think going part-time signals the end of career ambition
• Radio 5 Live's Nihal Arthanayake says he feels alienated as the only brown face in a sea of white at his workplace
• Bill Gates advocates for the three-day week but doesn't detail who he thinks is going to pay for it

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She explains the one thing that firms should do to fix their cultures (spoiler: train their managers), why she thinks inclusion is a more important element of culture than just diversity.

The previous episode with Frances Frei

Frances and Anne’s podcast Fixable

Frances’ and Anne Morriss’ new book Move Fast and Fix Things

Sign up for the newsletter 

Quotes from the book that I cited: 

“One way to build cynicism quickly in an organisation, something we see all the time, by the way - is to ask people for their input and then do very little with the information they give you (and take a long time to even do that)’

Robert McDonald, former CEO of P&G “Organisations are perfectly designed to get the results they get… if you don’t like the results you need to change the design”. 

We're often asked for a summary of how to build a workplace where everyone feels welcome. Our short answer is to recruit great people you don't already know, give them interesting work to do, and invest in them as if your company's future depends on it. If they deserve a promotion, give it to them in a timely man-ner. Don't make them wait. Don't make them go to a competitor to get the role, title, and decision rights they already earned on your watch. And in the name of all that is right and just in the world, pay them fairly and equitably for the work they do.”

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’re someone whose job it is think about culture, or maybe you’re a boss who has tried to communicate values to your team then today’s episode is an essential listen.

Donald Sull and Charlie Sull are a father and son research team who have discovered extraordinary insights into values and what they look like in the real world.

Here are some articles to get you going to understand the world of the Sulls:

Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation

The Toxic Culture Gap Shows Companies Are Failing Women

Why leaders need to worry about toxic culture?

Charlie and Donald have a business that focusses on this called Culture X.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we go deep on the latest news about work.

• ITV tell staff to declare ‘friendships’
• Moderation staff at Facebook are suing over PTSD
• BBC staff given help for stress levels
• 'We Had To Remove This Post' - brilliant novella by Hanna Bervoets
• Oobah Butler’s Amazon show on Channel 4
• Reddit anti work
• Reddit r/LateStageCapitalism
• Matt’s final comment about having orgasms to boost productivity
• Big Train sketch: 'no wanking in the office please'

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we go deep on the latest news about work.

We discuss:

• Two thirds of bosses expect a return to the office by 2036
• KPMG CEO survey
• David Foster Wallace - This is Water commencement speech
• Shonda Rhimes “Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life”
• 80% of remote workers claim to have two jobs
• Email sign-offs are changing
• Coffee badging as a protest against being in the office
• Snail girl jobs (and the toxicity of ‘trends’ about women working less)
• The gendered nature of WFH assessment (participants in research were less likely to choose to hire working mothers than childless women)

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What Ange Postecoglou changed at Spurs in his first 100 days: ‘The mood has been transformed’

Charlie writes about the oratory of Ange Postecoglou

Last week I read something wonderful about the culture of Tottenham Hotspur, I contacted the writer and it felt like it was worth putting out quickly. We’ve got a couple of podcast recorded with Matt and Ellen so we’ll be back for a fuller episode next week.

Ange Postecoglou has been the manager of Spurs, Tottenham Hotspur, for around a hundred days. In that time he’s started something of a transformation. And I can tell that because the Spurs fans I know how have started smiling. Spurs have started the season well, currently sitting 2nd in the Premier League. But more than that the players seem to be happy and are playing exciting football.

There was a brilliant article by Charlie Ecceshare from The Athletic looking into the culture of the club under Ange, the article talked about how the mood of the club has been transformed.

For anyone interested in the impact that cultural change can create it was a fascinating read, full of specifics and clear actions.

Aren’t all of us looking to change the mood of our jobs? I got in touch with Charlie and we talked about Postecoglou, culture and the impact that culture has on results. 

In the show note you’ll find links to Charlie’s articles, YouTube clips of some team talks we discuss and some other things that you might find of interest, like an interview with Gary Lineker. 

Fabulous interview with Gary Lineker

Big Ange motivational speech

Thank you to Charlie, all of the articles mentioned are in the show notes. What a fabulous discussion. I’m grateful for him taking the time to chat to me. If you’re interested in workplace culture you can sign up to the newsletter in the show notes - and also check out previous episodes on Liverpool FC, Barcelona and the All Blacks.

Further listening:

• Inside Klopp's early days at Liverpool
• A close look at Barcelona's culture
• The culture of the All Blacks
• Reinventing the culture of the England team with Gareth Southgate

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amy Edmondson is the most renowned organisational psychologist in the world. In other words she's looked to more than anyone else for the answers of how to fix work.

In this in depth discussion she talks us through what she understands by psychological safety, how any of us can create it and what she believes the best team structure is to achieve it.

We're also joined by Octavius Black, founder of Mind Gym, who provide behavioural science based interventions for lots of the biggest companies in the world.

Amy's new book is The Right Kind of Wrong

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode explores the concept of fun and its importance in adult life, challenging the misperception that fun is frivolous.

What is fun? Catherine Price suggests that it is the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow.

The discussion also addresses the impact of social media on fake fun and the role of playfulness in work and productivity. The conversation explores the importance of fun in the workplace and the impact it has on productivity, connection, and overall well-being. It delves into the challenges of creating a fun work environment, the role of playfulness in building connections, and the significance of in-person interactions. The discussion also highlights the value of fun in education and its potential to bridge social and cultural divides.

Takeaways

• Fun is a feeling, not an activity, and it involves the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow.
• The misperception of fun as frivolous leads to the prioritization of fake fun over true fun, impacting mental and physical health.
• Playfulness is undervalued in work settings, but it is essential for creativity, productivity, and building closer relationships.
• Social media and technology addiction are designed to induce fake fun through dopamine triggers, leading to habituation and reduced enjoyment of everyday experiences.
• Creating space for spontaneity and identifying personal 'fun magnets' are essential for experiencing true fun in everyday life. Creating a fun work environment can improve productivity, connection, and employee well-being.
• In-person interactions play a crucial role in building meaningful connections and fostering a sense of community in the workplace.
• Fun and playfulness have the potential to bridge social and cultural divides, creating a more inclusive and connected society.

Chapters

00:00

The Essence of Fun: Playfulness, Connection, and Flow

08:27

The Impact of Fake Fun: Social Media and Technology Addiction

15:27

The Role of Playfulness in Work and Productivity

31:20

Focusing on Inputs and Creating a Fun Work Environment

34:22

The Role of Playfulness in Building Connections

39:02

Fun as a Tool for Bridging Social Divides

Catherine Price is a science and health writer who has written a couple of sensationally timely books.

Firstly How to Break Up With Your Phone

Secondly, and today’s discussion focusses on this, The Power of Fun

I was put on to it by Elle Hunt’s Power of Fun article in The Guardian

Memorise it: fun is playful connected flow

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is hosted by Bruce Daisley, Ellen C Scott and Matthew Cook.

Ellen wrote about her learnings about being a manager

Despite government threats of legal action Cambridgeshire council are continuing their evidence-led trial of the 4-day week. “Nine in ten councils are struggling with job recruitment and retention and a four-day working week could be the answer”

Ellen mentions this article on Stylist about boundaries (registration required)

Half of the employees of Grindr were fired after the firm issued a RTO order. This included 100% of the firm’s trans employees. As Matt points out in the show trans employees are subject to the legislative whims of different states in the US and understandably try to locate in safe places.

We talk about the World Values Survey report "What the world thinks about work"

• People in the UK are least likely to say work is important in their life. It's still seems pretty high, 73% of the UK public say work is very or rather important in their life - but significantly lower than other countries. Other western nations such as Italy, Spain, Sweden, France and Norway all rank much higher than the UK on this measure, with more than nine in 10 saying work is important in their life.
• Headline warning: This is not a new development. the share of the British public who say work is important in their life has hardly changed in three decades 
• But there are big generational differences in views on whether work should always come first. One of the most interesting charts has been millennial's views crashing: it went from a hustle culture high of 41% in 2009 to 14% in 2022. That is a huge shift in attitude

Libby Sander is an internationally renowned expert on work and the workplace, the MBA Director and Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Bond University. She is a leading thinker on understanding the future of work, and how we can reimagine it to live more meaningful and creative lives.

Read Libby on RTO

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buy Belonging

Owen Eastwood is the most in-demand team performance coach in the world

He's earned that reputation by delivering break-through results with a diverse range of teams from Gareth Southgate’s England team and the England women’s team, to the senior leadership team of NATO. His former clients represent an elite range of teams who have gone on to achieve incredible victories. We wanted to understand how he did it.

What does he say? What does he ask?

Eastwood’s approach is consistent. By zooming out and pointing our fleeting contribution to legacy he urges teams to think about their ‘Us’ story. For me this suggests that what he’s actually doing is emphasising a powerful shared identity. In my mind I would see this as activating a visceral bond of community, he chooses to label it as ‘belonging’. That distinction ends up feeling semantic when presented with what his approach achieves.

This week on the podcast I’m joined by new co-hosts Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook as we talk to Owen and debate purpose, identity and belonging.

It’s a truly brilliant listen.

Follow Owen on LinkedIn

Joe Lycett’s remarkable special - the last 20 minutes of this are astonishing viewing

Ellen on thinking about leaving work on time

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You may have read Ellen’s brilliant writing in The Stylist where she is the Deputy Digital Editor and previously in Metro. She writes and edits pieces on work, mental health, relationships, and more. Here’s her own Substack on work. She is also working on fiction and is represented by The Soho Agency.

Matt/Matthew is the founder of theSHIFT, an award-winning learning consultancy that specialises in cultural change inside organisations. He’s basically a people enthusiast who has turned it into his job.

I’ll be honest I love talking about work but I was worried that my own perspective might be a bit limiting. First and foremost I ended up as a boss and whether you intend it to or not that skews your perspective. Ellen and Matthew are here to help give a broader view. We loved recording the first episode and hopefully great things are to come.

You’ll find more on work at the ESWR website and the Make Work Better newsletter.

Today’s links:

Ellen’s post about AI

The rise of Millennial Momagers

McKinsey claims to have cracked the formula for hybrid working

‘Sorry but productivity is lower at home’ - the article and the discussion of it is covered here

Hybrid workers are spending fully half of their work time in meetings

Maker vs Manager Schedule

The benefit of ‘collective effervescence’ (there’s loads about this in Fortitude, p168)

Erin Meyer on the cultural differences of giving feedback

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you liked this I actually shared a lot of the data on the newsletter a couple of weeks ago - read that here.

Today's episode is an in depth exploration of the latest Gallup Global Workplace Report, Anna Sawyer, a Principal at Gallup takes us through the findings - and the implications for all leaders.

Get your hands on Gallup’s ‘State of the Global Workplace Report’

Here’s Anna on LinkedIn

I loved the Gallup report on employee burnout (and I cited the results in the show)

We talk a little about the Gallup Q12 criteria that help them form their results, people are asked:

• I know what is expected of me at work.
• I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
• My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
• There is someone at work who encourages my development.
• At work, my opinions seem to count.
• The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
• My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
• I have a best friend at work.
• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
• This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Friendship is ‘the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of having been granted the sight of the essence of another’ - David Whyte 

Read the meta-analysis (I *think* only 2020 is released at the moment)

Findings: Median percent differences between top-quartile and bottom-quartile units were:

• 10% in customer loyalty/engagement

• 23% in profitability

• 18% in productivity (sales)

• 14% in productivity (production records and evaluations)

• 18% in turnover for high-turnover organisations (those with more than 40% annualised turnover)

• 43% in turnover for low-turnover organisations (those with 40% or lower annualised turnover)

• 64% in safety incidents (accidents)

• 81% in absenteeism

• 28% in shrinkage (theft)

• 58% in patient safety incidents (mortality and falls)

• 41% in quality (defects)

• 66% in wellbeing (net thriving employees)

• 13% in organisational citizenship (participation)

View the Science Behind the Questions

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is an in depth exploration of the latest Gallup Global Workplace Report, Anna Sawyer, a Principal at Gallup takes us through the findings - and the implications for all leaders.

Get your hands on Gallup’s ‘State of the Global Workplace Report’

Here’s Anna on LinkedIn

I loved the Gallup report on employee burnout (and I cited the results in the show)

We talk a little about the Gallup Q12 criteria that help them form their results, people are asked:

• I know what is expected of me at work.
• I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
• My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
• There is someone at work who encourages my development.
• At work, my opinions seem to count.
• The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
• My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
• I have a best friend at work.
• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
• This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Friendship is ‘the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of having been granted the sight of the essence of another’ - David Whyte 

Read the meta-analysis (I *think* only 2020 is released at the moment)

Findings: Median percent differences between top-quartile and bottom-quartile units were:

• 10% in customer loyalty/engagement

• 23% in profitability

• 18% in productivity (sales)

• 14% in productivity (production records and evaluations)

• 18% in turnover for high-turnover organisations (those with more than 40% annualised turnover)

• 43% in turnover for low-turnover organisations (those with 40% or lower annualised turnover)

• 64% in safety incidents (accidents)

• 81% in absenteeism

• 28% in shrinkage (theft)

• 58% in patient safety incidents (mortality and falls)

• 41% in quality (defects)

• 66% in wellbeing (net thriving employees)

• 13% in organisational citizenship (participation)

View the Science Behind the Questions

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Make Work Better newsletter covered the 4 day week trials

For today’s episode I went to meet Alex Soujung Kim Pang. Alex has written a lot about our relationship with work, first in his book Rest and now in his book WORK LESS, DO MORE which is a refreshed version of Shorter.

When we first spoke the evidence for shorter working was a series of quirky stories of pioneering firms, frequently led by maverick bosses. In the last three years the landscape for shorter working (encompassing all manner of adaptations like four day weeks, compressed hours, 9 day fortnights and more) has transformed. Alex himself has played a role for 4 Day Week Global helping to design the mechanics of programs for test firms.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re in a stage place with AI right now where for most of us it’s still a parlour trick. Something that we’ve seen create images of the Pope in bling or summon up meal planners that we’ll never use. But we’ve not really seen how it will impact our jobs.

Along the way there have been some huge claims:

• An MIT study said that knowledge work could become 37% faster and more effective simply by using Chat GPT
• A study by Github found that software developers were 55% faster using Github Copilot

Anecdotally I have heard the same from software developers.

And in aggregate there’s certainly a chance that we’re not thinking of the implications of these things.

The economist Paul Krugman this week said that if AI is able to deliver an additional 1.5% of growth per year to the economy then we should stop worrying about national debt and a percentage of GDP. 

Of course, he would say that his own extrapolations on these things are just an attempt to float ideas.

That’s why today’s podcast was so important for me to feature. I got the chance to chat to Alexia Cambon, Senior Director of Modern Work Research at Microsoft and Nick Hedderman, Senior Director of Modern Work, Microsoft. The discussion has implications for all of us, and how quickly we set about changing the way we work

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now she returns with a new book, The Case for Good Jobs, which not only explains the reasoning for creating better working conditions for workers, but also how any firm can set about doing it. At the heart of the discussion is a recognition that workers want to do a good job - and often find obstacles in their way.

MIT Sloan Review: When Doing Less Adds Up to More

The Obstacles to Creating Good Jobs

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Banissy is a psychologist whose work focusses on the importance of physical connection between people, he styles himself as part of a group of ‘scientists who stroke’. Touch has become sigmatised by the actions of those who have misused it, to the extent that many of us have become fearful of touching the arm or shoulder of others.

Michael Banissy gives a compelling case for appropriate touch, and asks us to rethink the role it plays in our lives.

His book Why We Touch is out now. (It’s called Touch Matters in the US).

Read more: How touch changes our decision making

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An episode today that is a reflection on where work is going and what implications there are for cities, for workers and for life. 

Dror Poleg is a writer and commentator who thinks about how the internet is disrupting our lives. What sets him apart is his ability to see second and third order effects of change.

Dror Poleg's newsletter (and draft book of the future of work) can be found at his website.

Join me at Microsoft's event on AI and the future of work

Join me on 25th May at 12.30pm (13:30 CET) when I’ll be speaking at Microsoft’s Employee Experience event.

The event is focussed on developments in emerging workplace technologies, such as AI, and how we can optimise employee experience to help balance productivity, engagement, and wellbeing of employees.

I’ll be delivering a keynote speech and taking part in a fireside chat with Microsoft’s Alexia Cambon and Nick Hedderman about how we can implement AI in the workplace to build the future of work.

To register for your free seat, click the link here.

If you're interested in becoming a co-host on Eat Sleep Work Repeat get in touch: eatsleepworkrepeat.com/host

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s guest Professor Costas Andriopoulos explain curiosity is the engine of creativity. And by striving to be curious our minds will surprise us with the creativity that results.

There was a wonderful piece of work five years ago by Francesco Gino from Harvard Business School that looked into curiosity.

It found that of more than 3,000 employees from a wide range of firms and industries, only about 24% reported feeling curious in their jobs on a regular basis, and about 70% said they face barriers to asking more questions at work. 

In a study of 120 employees it was found that natural curiosity was associated with better job performance, as evaluated by their direct bosses.

In the survey of more than 3,000 employees mentioned earlier, 92% credited curious people with bringing new ideas into teams and organizations and viewed curiosity as a catalyst for job satisfaction, motivation, innovation, and high performance.

Professor Costas Andriopoulous is a Professor of Management and Associate Dean for Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School, City of London University.

Links for today:

Professor Costas' book: Purposeful Curiosity: How asking the right questions will change your life

Promptbase - is a marketplace for AI prompts (you’ll get the best value from it if you sign up for a paid subscription on Midjourney). Here’s my own experiments

If you’re interested in generative AI for business then the posts by Ethan Mollick are essential to follow (‘Come up with names for a pasta restaurant Now read the Igor Naming Guide on how to name companies, give me better suggestions. Check those names for trademark violations. Make up unique names that won't violate trademark, explain them’) 

I find that having inspiration can prompt your own imagination and this gallery can give you ideas.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ellen Scott is the deputy digital editor of Stylist and someone who has achieved recognition for having a sharp eye when it comes to observing the changing face of work.

Ellen was one of the first voices to pick up on the TikTok trend of Quiet Quitting, she's written about 'the ambi-work' movement and continues to give voice to the challenges facing Gen Z and Millennial workers. We talk about whether is as fair a deal today as it always was, and what firms could do to improve things.

You can read some of her past articles here

You'll find Joel Golby's final London Rental Property of the Week linked here.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This discussion with Robin Dunbar and Tracey Camilleri took me to places I hadn't expected to go. That hormones, our brains and time would play a part in the relationships we forge at work isn't something that you would expect to find in a company's culture document, but as you'll hear today they forge a vital component of better team work.

Hormones are triggered by emotional interactions with other humans. Uniquely they only tend to work face-to-face. Hormones can help us build affinity with others in a powerful way that is often overlooked.

Brain-size impacts the connections we have with those people. At the core of human experience is our closest one (or two) relationships. There’s a small circle of 4 or 5 people who sit at the heart of our lives, and up to 15 who make up the majority of our time.

And that time is critical for the strength of those connections. We spent 40% of our time with our 5 closest relationships, and 60% with the top 15. By spending time we can become close friends with people in our lives.

The Social Brain by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey and Robin Dunbar is out now.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amy is the author of Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People) and The HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict. She also co-hosts the Women at Work podcast, and is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, where she writes about workplace dynamics.

Articles mentioned:

The Harvard study of human life & wellbeing: The secret to happiness? Here’s some advice from the longest-running study on happiness

Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome  

The myth of bringing your full, authentic self to work  

Amy wrote a wonderful article on psychological safety this week.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeremy Utley leads some of the most popular courses on creativity and innovation at the d.school of Stanford University. I was delighted to see that he was making his teaching of such popular courses available to a wider audience and chased him for an interview. This is one of his first interviews to talk about his brand new book Ideaflow.

In it he discusses the way to have good ideas, and why most of us aren't willing to do what is required. I loved this discussion. Buy Ideaflow here - and find out more about Jeremy and his co-author, Perry Klebahn, here.

Sign up for the podcast newsletter here.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rory Sutherland is one of the most respected brains in the advertising industry, a man whose early endorsement of behavioural economics helped popularise the nascent science. He's also a regular writer for The Spectator and Vice Chief of Ogilvy Group. Rory joins me to interview to talk about my new book, Fortitude, which has become a Sunday Times Bestseller and tackles the myth of resilience.

The event was hosted by a brilliant organisation called Radix Big Tent. Radix Big Trent gives a platform for non-partisan conversations about big policy issues, giving a voice to people and places. It provokes and promotes new conversations about the regeneration and renewal of our society in a non-partisan way, inspiring practical actions which demonstrate the value of political intervention and delivering real change in left behind areas.

It convenes Summits, Festivals, physical and online events around the country that engage local leaders and ordinary people, bringing them into contact with national policy makers and influencers.

If you would like to hear more please sign up on radixuk.org

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I wanted to explore conversations with leaders who were leading experiments in how to make things feel different.

In what prove to be a pair of candid conversations I talk to two firms who are asking the question if workplaces can be more motivated by trying to vary the ingredients. John Sill tells us how his firm The Foundation are trying out Wednesday plus one, then John Readman tells us how Modo25 have become the latest firm to try the four-day week - with some learnings along the way.

If you like this you can sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all tell stories all of the time, but what makes a magical, memorable story? What pitfalls should we avoid? This was an issue that I was thinking about. Presentations are stories, and we deliver presentations every day.

In my own investigation I found real value in the book by the storytelling organisation The Moth. I was beyond excited when I saw they were releasing a UK edition of the book. One of the authors Kate Tellers joins me to discuss The Moth's approach to making memorable stories. Kate is a senior director at The Moth, helping people transform into storytellers. But she explains something even more valuable, of how The Moth run workshops that allow colleagues to better connect with each other by sharing their stories with each other. 

How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth

Carolyn Martin's story about becoming a Catholic Sister (such a beautiful story)

Josh Broder's story about being an extra in a huge film (this is incredible)

Kate's own Moth stories are here

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listen to Professor Sophie Scott on our previous episode about laughter

Royal Institution Christmas Lecture

Why we laugh

Cover image by Hugging Face AI

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

But maybe you don't want something that is too work related in the midst of the summer, so this is an episode that is more psychology and life than workplace culture. It's a lovely discussion with Max Dickins author of 'Billy No Mates'.

I got so much from the book - and from the discussion. Max reflects on the geezerish persona he adopts with workmen in his house and wonders if it's a performance and if it is a performance is it by him, or the workman or both of them. He considers how for many men adult life becomes a process of refusing to demonstrate - and then refusing to experience - joy. As someone asked of him, 'what happened to these men'?

The article that the episode is titled after is here - we discuss it in the show: “Men have no friends and women carry the burden”

Max's book is available now.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After recent episodes have made a case that the office might be on the way out, today is a voice who dares to say otherwise. Tom Goodwin is an active voice in media - operating somewhere between provocateur and consultant. He has been voted a top 10 voice in Marketing by LinkedIn, one of 30 people to follow on Twitter by Business Insider, and a 'must follow' by Fast Company. 

In the conversation we discuss how there's a danger that we might be turning our backs on something special in the office, 'dog mode' and how the best technology is the technology that we have available to us now.

Tom's new book is a total rewrite of his first book Digital Darwinism.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sign up for the free Winning Workplace Culture course here if you prefer Fortitude.

Get the Make Work Better newsletter here

Liz Fosslien is half of Liz and Mollie whose perceptive dissections of contemporary anxieties have won hundreds of thousands of fans. Liz talks through her process of creating these atoms of insight and how the response from viewers inspired them to write a new book about how to cope with the major emotions in our lives.

A lovely warm summer conversation. You can follow Liz and Mollie on social media - or buy their new book Big Feelings here

Norrie Norrie Norrie

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• Find out more about St John's Ambulance - become a volunteer
• Donate to St John's Ambulance
• Parkrun research: volunteers see a bigger health uplift than the runners

Pre-order Fortitude and get a workplace culture course for free (before 8th July 2022)

The book is about resilience - how we get it wrong, and where it really lies. There are a lot of mistakes made about resilience and increasingly our teams are getting fed up hearing us talk about it. Fortitude explores where resilience really lives.

The early reviews on the book are sensational.

Steven Bartlett said:

‘This is a truly refreshing, captivating and important book that shifted my perception on a topic I thought I knew! A must read.’

Gary Lineker said:

‘A book that confirms what I've always believed, that we can't be resilient on our own. In fact resilience is about all of us being stronger than any of us.’

Oliver Burkeman said:

‘An important and well-timed book. A fascinating and important pushback against the narrow, 

joy-eroding version of 'resilience' that would leave us to sink or swim alone, Fortitude is an 

indispensable guide to a more energising, human, and effective approach to working and 

thriving in a post-pandemic world’

Noreena Hertz, author of The Lonely Century said:

 'A thought provoking exploration of what it takes to get through tough times and a compelling 

endorsement of the power of others to hold us up’.

Nadiya Hussain said:

'A much needed book that unfolds the surprising secrets of resilience. Something I never knew i needed to read but I'm so glad I did, it’s opened up a whole angle of thinking'

Alastair Campbell said:

‘A fascinating analysis of resilience - what it is, what is isn’t and why, when we develop it together, it becomes something better and more important, fortitude. It seems that resilience is a team game.’

Photo by Jorge De Jorge on Unsplash

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ahead of that I want to make an announcement about what I've been working on - with my new book Fortitude.

Fortitude is an investigation into the elusive idea of resilience, a book that discovers that resilience is a area filled with mistakes, misdirection and over-promise. The book finds the true secrets of resilience.

You can find out all of about the book here or you can receive my workplace culture course for free if you pre-order it now.

The Future Forum book 'How the Future Works' is available now.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The words of today's guest have stayed with me for the last few months. I'm so delighted to talk to Professor Raj Choudhury from Harvard Business School who will possibly wake you up from a self-created illusion.

He'll explain:

• why WFA is inevitable
• the role that top talent have in redefining work for everyone
• why 25% is a magic amount of time
• why WFA presents a win-win-win solution for us

I was so looking forward to this and it doesn't disappoint.

Read Professor Choudhury's HBR cover article.

Here is the audio clip I mentioned.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dan's 2018 book The Culture Code allowed him to go deep with some of the most successful cultures in the world - in the arenas of business, sport and even the military. He's returning after the blazing success of the Culture Code with a book that gives more of the energy of that title but drawn into a workbook, The Culture Playbook - imagine something like a journal with prompts of what to write.

He joined me for a discussion where we reflect on the challenges of the last 2 years and what any organisation should be thinking about as they set about creating a winning, forward-looking culture.

If you like this sign up for the newsletter - Make Work Better - for a special announcement in 3 weeks

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Along the way we talk about how the biggest innovations in remote working are yet to come - and are coming from mindblowing places. We talk the changing expectations of Gen Z workers, why Nick doesn't believe we should be giving up our office just yet. We hear where the sweetspot of hybrid working is right now and why a little less freedom and a little more co-ordination is the order of the day.

I was desperately trying to get Nick on the podcast and to land Anne Raimondi at the same time is a wonderful stroke of luck.

Asana's Anatomy of Work Report 2022 is available here. You can access Nick's work here.

Make Work Better on Nick's work **SIGN UP FOR FREE**

More from Nick

A brilliant listen.

Some key findings from the Asana report:

• 37% of workers say that they don’t have a clear start or finish time to their working day – rising to 53% for Gen Z employees
• Managers spend the most time everyday on work coordination (62%)
• As an organisation grows so does work about work. Employees at medium and large companies spend 59% of their day on it. That’s 5% more time than small businesses 

Compared to one year ago:

• 42% are spending more time on email 
• 40% are spending more time on video calls 
• 52% are multitasking more during virtual meetings 
• 56% feel they need to respond immediately to notifications 
• Despite nearly half of employees (47%) finding it easier to concentrate at home, 41% feel more isolated when working remotely

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Such a fascinating discussion today. I recently read Will Storr's brilliant book The Status Game and was so taken with it I invited him on the podcast.

He quotes Professor Brian Boyd when he says that we:

‘naturally pursue status with ferocity: we all relentlessly, if unconsciously, try to raise our own standing by impressing peers, and naturally if unconsciously, evaluate others in terms of their standing’.

In study after study it is found that our wellbeing depends on the degree that we feel respected by other people. One study found that the attainment off status of its loss was ‘the strongest predictor of long-term positive and negative feelings’ in subjects.

I wanted to pick Will's brains to hear more of this - but also to understand how these mechanisms impact us at work. If you're interested in psychology or just a bit of people watching you'll love the reframing that this discussion provides for us. Along the way Will gives us the definitive take on why Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars.

Sign up to the newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today’s podcast I talk to two guests who have slightly different perspectives on how to fix the culture of the Met Police.

Dr Megan O’Neill is Associate Director at the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. She has extensively studied the police and has worked closely with them - most notably helping to revise a stop and search policy that was found to be failing. She explains the challenges of the job, and how we should think about getting buy in to reform.

Simon Holdaway is Professor emeritus of Criminology at the University of Sheffield. He joined the police after he left school and was promoted to sergeant. His study about the police has explored the culture of the profession and how themes of race could be more effectively tackled. 

While the police (and the Met) might not feel adjacent to your business there are critical lessons about cultural change.

Four lessons of what good culture requires:

• Space - good culture can't exist when there is no slack in the system
• Voice - workers need to feel like they are heard (Megan says this is part of 'organisational justice') - this makes workers feel valued
• Values - explaining what the organisation stands for,
• Middle management - behind any culture problem there's the need to purge the organisation of cultural misfits - getting the middle management right is the best way to make this take hold

Further information:

• Why drug policy is a racial issue
• In the past I've done two episodes about the police here
• 'We will march with everybody': Houston police chief tells protesters

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I found Caleb's podcast via Antony Slumbers Twitter feed and it's become part of my weekly routine as it normally drops in time for my Sunday run. (BTW Antony was a former guest who shared with us the perspective of the commercial real estate sector early in the pandemic. I found the dialogue with Antony so rich that I wanted to seek another update from the sector.

The second half of the discussion is especially strong. I ask Caleb to give the stump pitch for the office and his answer is stunning. He also shares a stark warning that 'bad culture is a bigger threat to the office than the pandemic'.

Caleb also shares with us the perspective of his most inspiring guest on his own podcast - who outlined what is a breathtaking approach to the future office.

Here is the episode that he mentions with Michelle Schnieder.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom is a brilliant bright leader intent on creating something sustainable and special in the bank. He is thinking of creating co-working in branches. He is leading best practice about different workstyles in an organisation that isn't mandating any rules. In classic egoless style Tom brought along his colleague Josh Reynolds who works in employee experience. You can find them both on Linked In here:

Tom Kegode is the leader for Lloyds’ Work:Lab initiative.

Josh Reynolds sits within colleague experience.

Sign up for the newsletter.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you like this sign up for the Make Work Better newsletter.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• UK knowledge workers are most likely to say they want flexibility in where they work (81%)
• 60% of UK knowledge workers are more open to changing jobs in the next year
• 69% UK knowledge workers say they want to work hybrid - 58% are currently doing so

Brian also gives a shout out to Donut - a tool to build serendipity.

Then I speak to one of the most respected thought leaders in making sense of the future of work, Julia Hobsbawm is the sought after intelligent voice when it comes to future of work discussions. She chairs the Demos 'Workshift Commission. Her new book, The Nowhere Office is a confident reflection about how we can tackle the future - it’s out for pre-order now.

We talk about office politics, establishing what Leesman call our 'workplace why' - and how we can make hybrid work.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I wanted to understand what was going on here, and what any of should be doing about it. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis are the UK's most respected careers coaches. Their first book The Squiggly Career is a perennial bestseller, and has become adopted into the lexicon of how we talk about a renegotiated relationship with our careers. Their TED Talk has received millions of views. They have a new book out, You Coach You, which offers practical coaching for anyone curious about changing their career. Some of their suggestions - like job scanning - will help you reorientate what you want from your job - and how you can achieve it.

Whether you're thinking about changing work - or just have friends who are considering it - this is a great episode to help us reflect on what we want from our jobs.

Buy You Coach You now

Sign up for the newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At this time of year I find myself listening to more podcasts I’ve released two episodes this week. One is a truly brilliant discussion about how simple decisions can transform workplace culture. And the second is not really about workplace culture but is a stimulating reflection on the way we’re living .

A couple of years ago I loved Jia tolentino’s Trick Mirror which was a sparklingly intelligent reflection on the way that the internet is evolving. And along the same lines is a brand new book, Disconnected by Emma Gannon. Emma is increasingly accomplished in multiple fields, she’s a novelist, a non-fiction writer and also an incredibly successful podcaster with over 10 million listens to her podcasts.

She’s written a new book which comes at a time that a lot of us are considering renegotiating relationship with our phone. But how can be not lose what we love about our devices which increasing our connection to those around us - a great discussion.

Along the way we also talk about her brand new writers' journal which you can find out more about here.

Photo by Rahul Chakraborty on Unsplash

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was doing some thinking for some businesses over the last few weeks and the work of one person sprung to mind. Zeynep Ton is a professor of operation management at MIT Sloan School of Management. She found herself looking at the challenges that some businesses had with high employee turnover. 

They were losing a lot of people. It was causing their service to suffer - it was also costing them a lot of money training and recruiting people. Sounds familiar?

From this it lead to another understanding. Some organisations by thinking about and planning the employee experience of work create jobs that were less stressful and more rewarding. It struck her that quite often companies don’t want to make decisions or create limitations for fear of upsetting customers. But in the process they become more muddled for customers and less rewarding for employees.

Zeynep goes on to say that the firms who think about these things and set about creating good culture and good jobs (a) are more profitable and have higher revenue (b) build more sustainable businesses so their stock does better.

Here are her 4 pillars:

1. operational simplification
2. standardisation AND empowerment
3. cross-training
4. operating with slack

Good more about the Good Jobs Strategy

Read Zeynep's book

Sign up for the Make Work Better newsletter

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How big an issue is this for us? Noreena Hertz is here to persuade you this silent spread of loneliness has wide reaching consequences, both for our organisations and for our societies.

In a brilliant and wide-ranging discussion we discuss why loneliness matters and what any of us should be thinking about to make our experience of work more complete. If you enjoyed this then this week's newsletter covers adjacent themes: sign up here

Photo by Lowie Vanhoutte on Unsplash

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

But in that space there are some visionaries who are helping us seeing what is staring us in the face. Last year we’ve spoken to Antony Slumbers, on the newsletter I’ve shared links to the Work Bold podcast by Caleb Parker.

Get Cushman & Wakefield’s Return to the Office report

Read more of the C&W Futures posts

Sign up for the podcast's newsletter - Make Work Better

Today I add Richard Pickering to that list. I was delighted to hear Richard, someone whose writing I’ve been following for a couple of years, speak at an event I was presenting at.

We had such a stimulating discussion on the sidelines that I was desperate to persuade Richard to come on here to talk. Richard is the Chief Strategy Officer at Cushman & Wakefield, one of the largest commercial real estate services companies in the world. His job is to make sense of the changes happening in the demand for property and to advise clients where we’re going.

He’s straight talking - both about what the office needs to adapt and how this is going to have ripple effects for companies and cities.

We talk about: 

• How we’ve only just started understanding different modalities of work
• How firms might start including commuting time in the working day
• How cities might start offering public transport for free
• How cities will become younger

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we talk about his pursuit of elite productivity - but also what it taught him about the ultimate goal of managing one's time. A truly brilliant discussion.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last few weeks I've been intrigued with the firms who have chosen to bite the bullet and ditch their office. What are their philosophies about getting colleagues together in person? How do they think about recruiting? What software tools do they use? What made them make the leap?

First up I talked to Camilla Boyer who plays a leading role at making the culture at events platform Hopin. Andrew McNeile is the Chief Customer Officer for Thinscale - a company that supplies secure remote working software for outsourcing firms. One of their customers has 375,000 user on their remote work systems. Then I chatted to Lewis Clark at Qatalog he is responsible for storytelling at Qatalog who are remote first (but he spends one day a week in the office).

Then I realised all of these firms were in some way invested in the shift to remote working so I talked to a real person - Lisa Freshwater has been helping Blood Cancer UK ditch their office for good. Finally I chatted to Dan Sodergren whose company YourFLOCK is fully remote.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We cover:

• how imposters' syndrome might not be a disaster for your career
• how to tell if your boss is a narcissist
• how to deal with boss who is a people pleaser

If you're a people watcher or amateur psychologist you're going to love this. Naomi's new book is The Man Who Mistook His Job for His Life: How to Thrive at Work by Leaving Your Emotional Baggage Behind

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is by two authors of a brand new book that I was interested to check out because it covers some of the biggest themes that hybrid working is going to impact - the issue of group identity. I genuinely think this is one of the biggest things that companies need to be thinking about right now.

As we discuss a lot of firms have thought about mission or values but the very best organisations create a sense of collective identity in their teams (and look this might be slightly different identity for different themes).

Identity is often seen to be something negative in politics or society - mainly because it is so expertly used by people we don't like. But it's incredibly powerful for any group - and understanding it is vital. Group identity is a big predictor of your likelihood of being vaccinated, clever nations like New Zealand used it to set about creating 'a team of five million' to fight the disease.

The discussion is with by Jay Van Bavel  and Dominic J. Packer who as you’ll hear are both Canadian psychologists practicising in the US. Their book, The Power of Us, is out this week.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first of two read-alongs in August. Stacks of listeners and newsletter subscribers are reading along on two culture books with us, today we’re talking about Legacy by James Kerr. In two weeks we’re talking about What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz. Even you don’t read them the podcast here will cover the lessons of the books for anyone interested in workplace culture - and learning together. Go to the newsletter to join in with the conversation.

The All Blacks are the most successful rugby team of all time, in fact they have been called the most successful team in any sport. Drawing their players from a male population of just 2.5m New Zealand adult men, they don’t have any size advantage of the pool they draw from (if size determined outcome then England have more rugby players than the rest of the world combined). But the importance of team values have helped the team create and sustain a meaningful connection with the legacy of the team.

‘Culture is like an organism, continually growing and changing’.

Listen to the discussion then join the conversation about the key themes - either reply to the newsletter or add your comment in the chat threads here:

• Sweeping the sheds/no dickheads
• Rituals define the All Blacks’ culture

Divergent vs convergent meetings

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does political discourse have a place in the workplace? What is going on Basecamp? A truly dazzling discussion with Megan Reitz, Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Ashridge Executive Education – part of Hult International Business School. I got in touch with Megan when I saw her articles about Basecamp, Coinbase and political activism at work. Along the way we discuss Jonathan Haidt and whether Gen Z’s are softer than previous generations. I reference a discussion between Jonathan Haidt and the very first guest of the podcast Richard Reeves. Haidt’s book The Coddling of the American Mind is an intoxicating spell. It tells you really clearly why young people are softer now than previous generations (and that argument would be all the better if it were true).

Firstly, in depth coverage of the specifics of the Basecamp issue.

Then, Megan’s articles: what is your response to employee activism? Part two

Why employee activism needs to feature in your HR strategy

The Douglas Adams quote: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Announcing that they’d surpassed 200 million Prime members was just one of the milestones that the company was able to celebrate in a blowout performance. The company’s sales - no doubt helped by a captive audience trapped at home in a pandemic - rose by 44%, a growth clip that would seem impossibly high for a 17 year old firm if we hadn’t seen Apple’s revenue grow by 54% two days previously.

The interesting difference between Amazon and many of the tech brands that we’re surrounded with is that much of their innovation comes from within. For sure we all use multiple products by Google, but the search company bought YouTube, bought Android, bought what became Google Maps, bought Waze, bought Nest, bought their self-driving cars business, bought DoubleClick ads, and also bought lots of things that are now sitting in the where are they now? file like Fitbit and Motorola. Sure we know that Facebook own Instagram (bought in 2012), Whatsapp (bought in 2014) and Oculus (bought in 2014) but their homeground products (remember Poke? Slingshot? Lasso? of course you don’t).

The big question you might ask about these big tech cultures is ‘if they’re so special how come they don’t create any follow-on hits themselves?’ Tech versions of Pixar they are not, they’re the Maroon 5’s of invention, shipping in the clever ideas of other people to keep them bopping in the app charts. It’s not unfair to characterise these companies as bloated bureaucracies propped up by vastly cash generative ad businesses. The commercial real estate expert Dror Poleg commented last week that we sometimes look to the examples set by these big firms as a sign of what the smart brains are doing. Poleg was looking at JP Morgan just about agreeing to some degree of hybrid working. The truth of all of these firms is that, despite the external mystique, they are able to avoid decisions of scarcity by their high margins and often make terrible decisions along the way. I’m often emailed by people who work at big tech firms who tell me that their job is a slow-moving bureaucracy overwhelmed with rules and red-tape, in contrast when people from education or local government contact me they are apologetic for how slow their cultures are to evolve. Little do they know how big tech firms share a lot in common with them.

So how do Amazon do it? This week’s podcast is a discussion with long-time Amazon exec Colin Bryar. Along the way we talk through Amazon’s Leadership Principles, how Amazon created products like Kindle and Prime, their recruitment process, and much more. But there was one thing that really stood out to me and that was the idea of ‘Separable, Single-Threaded Leadership’. As Colin told me Jeff Bezos made a comment one day, ‘The best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody’s part-time job’. Bezos realised that the worst part of people’s roles was having to keep dozens (hundreds!) of colleagues in the loop because of co-dependencies. The best way to make people feel empowered by their job was to genuinely empower them - to let them get on with them without having to tell everyone what they were doing all of the time. To that end Bezos decided ‘that if we wanted Amazon to be place where builders can build, we needed to eliminate communication, not encourage it’.

Wow. Think about that. Someone recognising that the worst part of your job is endless video calls and emails stopping you actually doing your job. As Colin puts it, ‘In other words, Jeff’s vision was that we needed to focus on loosely coupled...

Sign up to the Make Work Better newsletter or check out the best ever episodes at the website.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is made and hosted by Bruce Daisley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.