Eat Sleep Work Repeat - better workplace culture – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your office

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

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

This episode is part of the Presence project: Presence: Fixing culture starts with your calendar, not your office

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

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

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

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

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

If you're interested in workplace culture you might like my newsletter makeworkbetter.substack.com

This episode is about the power of diverse thinking. Our guest is the thinker, writer, commentator Matthew Syed.

Matthew represented Great Britain in table tennis at the Barcelona and Sydney Olympics. He’s since gone on to the one of the biggest, most successful business writers in the UK with his books like Bounce in 2010, Black Box Thinking in 2015, a kid’s book You Are Awesome in 2018 and Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking in 2019.

Rebel Ideas has just come out in paperback this week. If you enjoyed this episode please do share it on social media and get in touch via the website, I’d love to hear from you.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

"Purpose is something that can be found but cannot be given"

For this episode I talk with London Business School professor Dan Cable about what work is going to look like in the future as we contemplate the fall out of coronavirus and homeworking. Clearly a lot of firms aren't going to make it through this completely unprecedented situation and to some extent maybe these discussions might seem like first world problems. The intention is to help us understand how we can use this moment to make work better - never waste a good crisis - as we say in the show.

You can talk about this episode - and more - on our new forum.

Follow Dan on Twitter.

Dr Laurie Santos' happiness course and podcast.

Dan's book Alive at Work is a firm listener favourite.

Find Dan here in gif form.

Listen to Dan's podcast here

READ: Dan talked about a paper saying bosses think less of workers they don't see.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

You can talk about this episode - and more - on our new forum.

Well what a strange time we’re living through. I don’t what I can say that hasn’t already been said. So to some extent this episode is a distraction - something interesting to listen to from a profession that is always in our highest regard in times like this but too easily forgotten in easy times.

Christie Watson is a trained nurse who spent 20 years working in hospitals across London. 

She’s an Incredible testament to never allowing your creative spark to die. She explains to me how she wrote her first book - an award winning novel while studying a course in creative writing and working as a nurse - and also being a single mother. 

The novel won the immensely prestigious Costa Book Award (a prize she didn’t know she was nominated for). Brilliantly she had to Google the prize when she got called to say she’d won it.

Her book The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story is a remarkable tale of a job right in the heart of anxious families while retaining professional distance. I was interested what the job of nurse was like.

We talk about privilege - mainly mine that I found her book so eyeopening about areas that i was oblivious to.

It’s a beautiful account that has become a best seller because of the sympathy that runs through it. In one episode chrissie washes the hair of a recently deceased patient so that the smell of the burning that killed them won’t pollute the family’s last moment

Christie's book A Language of Kindness.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

Join tens of thousands of listeners by signing up for the newsletter now.

Second episode on the 4 day week. We go deep with someone who made the 4 day leap, Andrew Barnes' firm Perpetual Guardian made the shift to 4 days. He explains why some workers never told their partners, why others felt it transformed their experience of work and he gives the clear way to make a 4 day experiment work at your work.

If you're interested in going shorter one of the best ways seems to be to try a summer experiment - maybe from May to September - so now is a good time to start the preparation. If you try it please get in touch to share your experience!

Read the PDF of these episodes.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

First of two new episodes on one theme. Until coronavirus swept the world the discussion of 2020 was about the future of work being based on working less to achieve more. There are two episodes on this today.

Firstly former guest Alex Soojung Kim Pang talks about the research celebrating the benefits of working shorter (his book on the same subject came out this week). He spent the last 3 years going into firms that are using shorter working to build retention, productivity and creativity. He gives a clear roadmap of why you should consider working shorter, what the pitfalls are and what you could see as the benefit.

The next episode looks at a case study of a company that went 4 days to improve productivity. What did they do and how did it work out?

Download the PDF of this episode.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

When the biggest company in the world slipped from its throne how did a new CEO try to rescue it using culture. What did Satya Nadella do? How did it succeed, how did it fail? What can any of us do to change our company culture?

Download the PDF of the episode's lessons.

This episode draws on the outstanding paper by Herminia Ibarra, Aneeta Rattan and Anna Johnston from London Business School.

Here's the famous cartoon about Microsoft (vs other tech firms of the time)

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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

"We used to think 'the medium is the message', now we know that the messenger is the message".

Stephen Martin was the co-writer of one of my favourite books, Yes! so I was thrilled when I saw he had a new book, Messengers. He agreed to come on and talk about both books. How important are superficial aspects like appearance in our credibility. What is the one thing that we should do to make people like us more?

We discuss decision architecture, how any of us can influence others and the constituent parts of the choices that we all make.

Stephen - and his co-author, Joseph Marks are two of the most fascinating experts to help us interpret the complexities of trust and how we can foster a warmth in our own communication.

Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/eatsleepworkrepeat.

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