Eat Sleep Work Repeat - better workplace culture – Détails, épisodes et analyse

This is the second episode this month about AI and the implications for our jobs.

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. 

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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.

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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

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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.

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We're at part 3 of our series about community at work.

Today's guest is one of the most respected community thinkers in the world, Casper ter Kuile, Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School and author of The Power of Ritual. His book is a practical guide to the way that communities come to life, not only is it practical it's also brilliantly written. I found myself annotating a lot of it and it's impossible not to learn from his wisdom on the topic.

“Disconnection sours the sweet things in life and makes them nearly unbearable”

Casper previously wrote a free book with Angie Thurston is at Harvard Divinity School called How We Gather which was a wonderful exploration of how post religious (secular) groups were creating get togethers that seemed to be inspired by the religious communities that went before them. Casper's perspective is wonderful, so respectful of religion even though he sits outside of it.

This series of episodes has been about understanding how our organisations can shape a sense of belonging in us, especially when we're no longer physically together.

I feel like the episodes are a journey. No one has professed to know the answers and there's plenty of cautionary notes. I'm certain anyone trying to shape community in their work will come away with plenty of thoughts after this. Not least that Casper says that it goes strongly against the spirit of community that someone in a community can fire someone else. Community is built on safety. 

In the podcast I also talk about a previous episode on rituals and you can find that here.

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Today's episode is a further exploration of how firms will try to evolve their culture by hiring Community Managers. If you've not listened to last week's episode featuring Sarah Drinkwater pull up, back up and tuck in to that one first. Sarah said the person I should talk to is Abadesi Osunsade from Brandwatch - and so that's who we are talking to today. Abadesi's title is VP Global Community & Belonging at the 500 strong organisation.

We talk about seeking to get better at Diversity & Inclusion, giving voice to teams (and applicants) and how to build community in organisations who are no longer together.

Abadesi mentions Square's Rise program. This is the scheme that ensures there's always one minority candidate at the last stage of each hiring process. You'll find more details on it here. (note I couldn't find it on the UK website so maybe stay on the US site when it asks if you want to move).

Here's Abadesi's book and the other organisation she's part of The Hustle Crew.

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New podcast today - the first of four podcasts about what’s next with work - specifically how can we make work feel like a community again, especially when you’re hunkered down under the duvet trying to survive the November chill. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be chatting to some incredible guests.

Today I kick off with Sarah Drinkwater who is a supreme community builder and now works for the Atomico fund.

Some links to what we discuss!

I mention that Gary runs Wonder - this is their website

Follow Sarah on Twitter

Sarah's Medium post

She mentions Jason Fried's book Rework (my own book

The Interintellect

Q Anon - great piece on how one woman felt enveloped by the community (before she twigged it was all nonsense)

Q Anon - outstanding Reply All when they pretty much work out which crackpot is behind it. Created by a crackpot, weaponised by the GRU.

The Sunrise Movement - love these kids

Image by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

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Can't Even can be ordered now

AHP's original article in Buzzfeed

AHP's newsletter is here

Last year Anne Helen Petersen’s Buzzfeed article about burnout became a viral sensation, spawning a seemingly never-ending wave of ‘Year of Burnout’ headlines. Petersen’s writing triggered such recognition because she rooted it in the ordinary, in everyday experiences that were instantly relatable. She evoked her own life where industrious professional productivity (as a writer) was combined with a weary inability to get things done in her private life.

She initially thought there was something wrong with her. Googling for other people relating their aversion to getting sh!t done domestically, bills sitting unpaid, registrations unfiled, postal votes uncast, chores uncompleted. She realised it wasn’t personal, it was systematic. The way we were living was driving us to a constant feeling of being emotionally & physically spent.

Relatedly, it was sad to read of the passing of David Graeber this week. As an academic he was an unexpected icon of progressive politics but more than anything he was someone who invited us to revisit our preconceived ideas about how society functioned. Graeber had mused in his book ‘Bullshit Jobs’, wondering what had happened to the 15-hour week that in 1930 John Maynard Keynes had predicted by the end of the 20th century. He wondered whether it was indeed possible but societally we might have to reorganise the world of work to achieve it. Insurgent thinking for many, but there are echoes of this conjecture in Petersen’s book. Some of her thoughts might find resonance with frazzled younger workers wondering why they won’t be free of their student loans until 2045 and looking at house prices simmering away at 10 times their salary.

AHP reminds us that despite a whole genre of self-improvement literature that tells us that our personal actions can resolve burnout - or that, come on slouch, you need to be grittier, we need to point the finger at the actions of our firms, not ourselves. Ultimately she suggests that our casual acceptance of the way we’re working is having a toll on our psyche that can’t be easily unspun by productivity hacks and meditation apps. As Taylor Lorenz notes on the jacket, the book “is a compelling exploration of… how an entire generation has been set up to fail”.

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Today's interviewees: Bhushan Sethi leads PwC's workplace strategy business and Ben Waber is the CEO of workplace analytics firm, Humanyze.

Read the Humanyze research about the way work has changed since lockdown.

Here's the previous episode I recorded with Ben Waber.

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I was fortunate to speak to Gary Hamel about his forthcoming new book, Humanocracy.

He believes that the single most empowering (and profitable) thing that businesses can do is eliminate their creeping bureaucracy.

He talks about how increasingly organisations are paralysed with red tape and bureaucracy. The end result is that they can’t get anything done. There are some clear examples of this from the recent past. He characterises the Microsoft era under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as being one where opportunity after opportunity was passed because the organisation was so heavily bureaucratic. Satya Nadella has freed the organisation from a lot of this – with evident results.

Hamel proposes a series of questions that help you diagnose the extent of bureaucracy in your company - and you can read more about this here: read more

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What are other firms doing about returning to work? How can any of us work out the right thing to do? I chat to 4 more firms to hear their plans.

Listen to conversations with Beth Marie Norbury from Babcock International, Tom Ellis from Brand Genetics, Richard from a big secret pharmaceuticals firm and Laura Pleasance from Captify. This is addition to Dan Cullen Shute last episode.

Here's more on my survey I put out last week (from last week's newsletter):

We’ve already heard loud and clear that workers don’t want to return to the old days but we’re starting to hear more about firm ordering workers back to their seating plan. L’Oreal US saw some unwelcomed attention this month when they told workers that if they didn’t come back ASAP they needed to authorise the firm having access to their private medical records.

So what are other firms saying is going to happen next? I got just under 100 qualitative replies to the survey; from pharmaceutical companies to start-ups, charities to defence contractors. The replies detailed different approaches from companies as they try to work out how to act next. The main headlines were:

• Amongst all firms ‘normal’ has been postponed until 2021 - everything at the moment is being framed as interim. 2021 is when firms are expecting to be able to jump start their new culture.
• Just over two-fifths of firms (42%) have told workers they won’t be expected to return to offices until 2021 if they don’t want to. (26% back from September/October onwards, 31% already phasing some return of workers back to the office from August). This finding is consistent with the straw poll that Digiday performed across publishing and media companies.

Some of the most interesting quotations showing the spectrum of positions:

"[an organisation that went from 4 floors to 27 seats] It’s amazing how many of the things people said couldn’t be done from home could once COVID hit. We’re looking at a total rethink on workspaces and what the future looks like - a place for social interaction and collaboration with the ethos that work is something you do not somewhere you go… there’s no going back”

“We issued a survey to understand what our people feel comfortable with, and on that basis have told everyone no one will be asked to work from the office if they prefer not to for the rest of the year”

[We got everyone back to the office in mid July] “we're an office based business and we need to get used to being back in the office as we can't work from home together. No plans announced on long term flexibility but lots of employees are asking (as are new hires)”.

“The success of working from home, and the fact that so many staff have said they now want more flexibility, has lead [the organisation] to put one of our office buildings up for lease. So a full 5 day return to the office for everyone wouldn’t even be possible”.

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