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

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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

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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

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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"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.

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Here he is, the philosopher king. Alain de Botton is the man that wrote philosophy books that sold like airport thrillers. He's sold millions of books reflecting on life, work and happiness.

We share a wonderful discussion about what role work can fulfil in our lives, where education is going wrong and how we can use psychology to help diagnose the challenges of our problem colleagues.

Alain's two new books from The School of Life are How to Get on With Your Colleagues and How to Think More Effectively

You can follow him on Twitter.

School of Life has over 5m subscribers on YouTube.

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Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper are the creators of the Squiggly Careers podcast - and the authors of a brand new book, The Squiggly Career. If you're wondering what to do with your life Sarah and Helen might be the best person to help you find the right answers for you.

This episode answers questions about what we should expect from our jobs - and the where happiness at work lives.

Helen mentioned the values episode of their podcast and you'll find it here.

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Hot topic right now. Annie Auerbach talks about her way of working flexibly and explains how all of us could be living a life we love.

Annie is the author of Flex.

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I was flattered to be invited to visit the NHS trust of Barking, Havering and Redbridge last year. I spent an afternoon meeting the team and seeing the place in action.

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

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What's stopping you from you doing your best work ever? That's the question that Aaron Dignan (working at his culture consultancy, The Ready) asks the companies he meets. 

Often the biggest barrier to us doing our best work is often our own attitude and mindset - and Dignan takes us step by step into his process. Aaron's book Brave New Work, is out now.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Johann Hari's TED Talk

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Recorded at the Good Day at Work event in Manchester, hosted by Robertson Cooper.

During the last World Cup, as we gradually started believing in the prospects of a team whose members had surprised us with their humour, work-rate and calm demeanour there was a wonderful newspaper article that garnered lots of attention about the secrets of their transformation.

The piece introduced us to one of the people responsible for overhauling the mindset of the England squad. Previously players for the national team had always worn the heavy expectations upon them like a stiff and weighty leather overcoat. In the recent past those called up (like Raheem Sterling) have commented that the pressure created by fan aggression has stiffled players’ ability to express themselves creatively.

The nation was collectively astonished to see a very different England mentality this time round. And, as The Guardian article showed, Dr Pippa Grange was one of the people responsible.

It was a great honour to interview Pippa at the Good Day at Work event in Manchester in September 2019. The event was fully sold out, such was the interest in the outstanding line up of speakers.

Pippa spoke of:

• the importance of cultural moments
• the very first thing she does to build a winning culture
• what it’s like to be in that room before a huge game
• the realities of being a woman in the man’s world of sport
• the single thing that is way more important than positivity
• how a big (stressful) adventure can lead to wellness

The conversation was outstanding. Pippa is outgoing from the FA as I write this – I can’t wait to see what she does next.

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Today’s episode is about Uber. Its based on a brilliant book that stacks of people have found themselves tearing through in one sitting over the last couple of weeks, It’s a book called Superpumped by Mike Isaac. If you’ve heard Mike talking about the book, this chat will be different because we’re just going to focus on the culture of Uber. The question for me was ‘would Uber ever have been as successful if their culture wasn’t so psychopathic and secondly could someone else adapt Uber’s culture a little to be slightly less blatant in their evilness and get away with it. 

On today’s episode. A brilliant discussion with Mike Isaac about the culture at Uber. I’m not supporting anything at all they did but there are certainly aspects of that you can’t help but think are brilliant. Travis Kalanick took people whose previous job had been running coffee stores and gave them whole cities to run. Giving people autonomy produced incredible, incredible results. The question then becomes - could you have got rid of the bad consequences by managing it better. And that is the question.

Mike Isaac is a New York Times writer and the author of the brand new best selling Superpumped.

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If you're interested in workplace culture you might like my newsletter makeworkbetter.substack.comMarcus Buckingham is a research who has specialised in debunking some of the lies that pervade our jobs. His discoveries are eye-popping. Company culture can't be measured, 'OKRs' (goals) never work and much more. It's a compelling and entertaining listen.

Get in touch to tell Bruce what you thought - or leave us a review at Apple podcasts.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is part of #PODSTRIKE.

Buy 9 Lies About Work

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On this week's pod, David Gasca and Steven Rogelberg explain how you can fix your meetings to make work less miserable.

Firstly David Gasca outlines the Silent Meeting Manifesto. In the world of work we're surrounded with very little scrutiny of the norms of meetings and emails, in that context David's work helps reinvent one of the immovable pillars of work. Download the Amazon Kindle version here. Try a silent meeting and tell us how you get on.

Then we spend time with the meeting doctor, Steven Rogelberg (author of The Surprising Science of Meetings). He tells us about 'Magic Time' and more.

Our sponsor is Perkbox - the best platform to manage employee benefits.

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In 2007 as Barcelona were looking to replace their manager they were faced with a difficult challenge. They decided if they were to move on with a strong sense of sustainable success they needed to think about the culture they wanted to build.

They drew up a list of criteria for how they wanted to choose the manager. Interestingly most of the list didn't mention football. Damian Hughes, Professor of Organisational Psychology at Alliance Manchester Business School goes on to explain the Barcelona approach to the challenges they faced.

Professor Hughes gives a 5 state model of culture. That was the work of James Baron and Michael Hannan at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Buy The Barcelona Way

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How did Jurgen Klopp build a culture that has caught the attention of everyone in sport. Including interviews with Klopp, Liverpool players and leading management psychologists we discover the 4 secrets of Klopp's culture at Liverpool (data, a simple plan, inclusivity, psychological safety).

You’ll find episodes, transcripts and other good stuff on the website EatSleepWorkRepeat.com.

Best articles to read more:

BEST READ: New York Times on Liverpool and data

Melissa Reddy interview

A look at Klopp

How to improve engagement

Data and Liverpool

WATCH: How Jürgen Klopp made Liverpool BELIEVE again

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In 2015 Anita Williams Woolley and colleagues published some groundbreaking work understanding the 'collective intelligence' of teams.

They asked 'can we judge the cognitive power of a certain group of people?'

The answer was that yes, they could and also there were certain things that helped predict this collective intelligence.

Professor Woolley explains the part that gender plays in this team intelligence and then gives you a test that you can take to help predict collective intelligence in your own teams. Anita's work is fascinating and immensely thought provoking. Is it time to change your team?

You can take the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test here.

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A lot of people have asked me if I’m going to do an episode on the importance of play.

One of the challenges of the word play is that its such a broad word and its associations aren’t always helpful when it comes to bringing everyone with us but today's guest I think shows what an incredible thing it can be.

Heidi Edmundson is an emergency medicine consultant in the Emergency Department at the Whittington Hospital. She wrote this article in the Guardian in January: I introduced fun to the lives of A&E staff. The laughter was infectious

We explore themes of how you turn individuals into a team? This inspirational senior doctor recognised that exercises her team did on their downtime seemed to energise and inspire them - and made them more connected. I think you’ll end up wanting to read more of the theatrical exercises that Heidi used to help forge a tightly bonded team?

Here is a full guide to Forum Theatre and its games.

This goes deep - can playing games with each other be a simple way to remind ourselves of each other’s humanity where that empathy seems to be a super power that helps us do a better job?

I loved this discussion so much - you can keep up with Heidi here on her Twitter.

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James Bloodworth lived undercover working in Amazon warehouses, care homes and clocked up hours as an Uber driver to see the realities of modern work for millions of Brits. It makes for a fascinating glimpse at the lives of people who often get ignored from the privilege of the open plan.

James' compelling book Hired is out now.

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We often overlook the fact that trust is the basis for all good culture. I called out some of the remarkable data on this in the Work In 2024 deck.

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.

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This week I talk to Josh Krichefski (CEO, Mediacom UK) and Liz Fosslien (co-author of No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us Succeed).

Josh explains how they put mental health on the agenda on his firm by starting an honest, open discussion on it. Then we talk to Liz who gives us a users' guide to emotions at work. What can we do to make work a most empathetic way.

The Seligman model we discuss is the '3Ps'. Personalisation, Pervasiveness and Permanence.

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What if the way we've created work was built around the things that men prefer. Sue Unerman makes the compelling case that the workplace has evolved to serve male skills - and that this isn't good for the workplace and it isn't good for workers.

Sue Unerman is the Chief Transformation Officer at Mediacom, and also the author of two widely acclaimed books. We discussed her book (written with Kathryn Jacob) The Glass Wall

Follow Sue on Twitter.

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Jim Collins is one of the most respected business writers in the world. With his books Good to Great and Made to Last he became the observer of great companies and what made them special.

He's just published a new book which is a supplement to Good to Great (pssssst, read GTG first).

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Dave Trott is a creative director, copywriter, and author. A colossus of advertising who has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by D&AD.

I chatted to him at the IAB Leadership Summit in St Albans.

It's not a talk about work culture as such - just a fascinating chat with someone whose job it was to be creative for a living. Dave's latest book Creative Blindness is a riot of colourful stories and lively lessons. Follow Dave on Twitter.

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Today we’re chatting to the MD of the innovations company IDEO, Sue Siddall to hear how they bring the power of telling stories to life in their organisation. In addition we’ve got a legend of workplace study today. William Kahn was responsible for creating two of the big concepts of positive workplaces. He coined the concepts of both psychological safety and employee engagement.

William Kahn is Professor of Organisational Behavior at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He received his BA in Psychology from Clark University and his doctorate in Psychology from Yale University.

Sue Siddall tells us about 'Story Night' at IDEO. Sue is the UK MD of IDEO - a company who often provide inspiration to other organisations when they are thinking of fixing their culture.

If you like this, sign up for the New Work Now mailer here.

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If you’ve not already subscribed there’s a weekly email that goes out with the podcast. This week's includes a brilliant article on how small teams seem to be more radical, there’s a couple of discussions about Professor Adam Grant’s work and there’s a really good article on laughter in teams.

The laughter in teams article is from some research that NASA is looking at when it comes to casting their first expeditions to Mars. NASA looked at the success of different teams in isolation in Antartica. And it seemed that when there is a joker in the team, someone gifted in the art of lightening the mood it helps the overall morale of the team. I found this one fascinating, in The Joy of Work i talk about the successful Cambridge Boat race team in 2008 whose performance was transformed from a losing practice tie to winning boat race performance when they promoted a funny colleague to the boat. They felt that even though this wasn’t the best performing athlete they all felt themselves to be in a better mental state when he was present.

This is really neglected as a component of a happy team and if you’ve read The Joy of Work you’ll know I’m obsessed with it.

And it leads on to today’s guest. Robert Provine’s 2000 book Laughter is a real page turner of research about one of the most enjoyable but least studied aspects of modern life. He has also gone on to cover laughter - and other human behaviours in his 2013 book Curious Behaviour - Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond. Provine is the world’s expert on the subject. When we talked to Professor Sophie Scott in the live episode on laughter at work this time last year she mentioned professor Provine several times, and he’s also been the consultant for products like Tickle Me Elmo.

There’s some fascinating discussion. Laughter seems to signal a couple of things, safety and play. He makes a really interesting point at the end about the current state of politics being filled with the opposite of laughter - which is fear and anger

There was an interesting exercise a few years ago (and this was called out in Dan Lyons book lab rats) the exercise was conducted by Dan Ariely looked at the data from Great Place to Work. Ariely wanted to see if they had anything that correlated with stock data, to see if it would give you good investment advice to put money in good culture companies. Great Place to Work has been running since 1981 and each year has surveyed thousands of workers. Ariely looked at the data they had gathered.

There was one factor that leapt out. But it was an odd thing. It was safety. Companies where people consistently reported feeling safe at work tended to outperform the stock market average, sometimes by 200%. It applied to physical and emotional safety. The other factor that seemed to correlate was companies that had a strong sense of welcome.

If you listen to Professor Provine laughter would be in service of making all of those things stronger. What follows is the science of laughter, why we laugh and what it does. I hope you enjoy it.

Robert R. Provine, is a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I called him on the phone to pick his brain

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Thanks to Penguin Random House here's a free extract of a couple of different parts of The Joy of Work.

You can buy the full audiobook here.:

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This episode today is magnificent – you’re really going to be stimulated and challenged by it.

Today’s episode is with someone I contacted 2 years ago to discuss his previous book. Cal Newport’s Deep Work was a simple avocation of the process of using uninterrupted concentration to get things done. He’s now back with a new book about taking the same principles beyond work into life. It's a guide for achieving happiness by being more intentional in how you use technology. Some might call it a manual.

What follows here is a sensational discussion with Cal - Digital Minimalism is out next week. I heard someone say recently that if you hear a new idea and its not shocking, its not really new. On that criteria this is really new. You’re going to find it mind expanding. Maybe you’ll disagree with it but it will leave you thinking for hours afterwards.

Cal believes we should eliminate email. He thinks we should stop being connected to 100s of people on social media. He thinks we should distinguish between social conversation and digital connection. Where we should eliminate all digital interactions.

He’s got a way for you to get there. He speaks of three principles of digital minimalism

• Clutter is costly
• Optimisation is important
• Intentionality is satisfying

Here's a great article on the book.

His suggestions in the book – that we touch on are that we should abandon weak digital ties with people. If you find yourself merely liking someone’s photographs in the course of your relationship then you should detach yourself from them. I remember when I was on Facebook thinking I was going to cull anyone I wouldn’t go over and greet if I saw in the street and he says something probably a couple of steps further.

Not only is this chat great but he tells me about his next book that sounds incredible. I won’t make a big introduction because I asked Cal to do that himself so here he is. He’s Cal.

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This is a podcast about making work better.

You can find all of the previous episodes on the website.

Here we go, two little things today to make you feel more brainy. It’s Blue Monday in the UK today - the day when we’re told it’s the most miserable day of the year - when we hate our job. By listening to these experts you’ll have some guidelines how you can make work better. They give solutions but I think once you listen to the data you’ll work out what to do yourselves.

Firstly something that might not seem directly connected to people in work initially but it’s about loneliness. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Brigham Young University. We start talking about the problem of loneliness in society and we go on to consider how loneliness is growing in work.

Next I wanted to talk to two researchers who have set about investigating if working long hours - or working harder leads to greater workplace success. The authors of the paper are the brilliant Argyro Avgoustaki from ESCP Europe and Hans Frankort from Cass Business School

Read the paper on fixing work by Argyro Avgoustaki (ESCP Europe) and Hans Frankort (Cass Business School)

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If you're looking to get a job sometime in the next decade - and that includes almost all of us - there's a very high probability that you're going to be exposed to a psychometric test. As they become enhanced by AI and made more scaleable via apps these tests are going to go everywhere. So what are the implications for what work is going to look at.

This episode I'm looking into the evolving nature of recruiting and how its changing to accommodate the latest science and also innovations in technology. Firstly I'm going to get my hands dirty testing one of the new evolving candidate testing apps that are starting to emerge. Then I'm chatting to Rich Littledale and he is a chartered psychologist who previously worked at a leadership consulting firm and now helps start ups with their strategic people challenges.

Buy The Joy of Work

Follow Rich Littledale

Read more about PeopleUp - Rich's firm

Sign up for Eat Sleep Updates

Just a reminder that all of the episodes are live on the website Eat Sleep Work Repeat.

Rich Littledale runs a company called People Up. In the show he mentioned a blog post - you can find it here.

As Rich there says most orchestras have now introduced blind auditions and in fact most them use carpeted stages to avoid the sound of shoes. Read more here:

https://www.upworthy.com/this-orchestras-blind-audition-proves-bias-sneaks-in-when-you-least-expect-it

https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias

https://cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Goldin_Orchestrating%20Impartiality.pdf

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The role of managers are pivotal in our working lives but most managers aren't trained or prepared for the responsibilities that they are given.

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 in 2024 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

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Rob Briner is an professor of organisational behaviour at London Queen Mary’s University - he's rated the top HR thinker in the UK. This is a brilliant chat. Very much essential listening for anyone interested in HR but also worth listening for those of us who sit thinking ‘what do HR actually do?’ or what should we do to improve things round here.

We talk about ‘evidence based management’ - which you can find out more about here: The Centre for Evidence Based Management. I’d researched it but he explained it way better. He ends up giving me his take on work culture and lots lots more.

Rob outlines some of the pitfalls that any of us make when we set about fixing work. He also explains the challenges of psychology - discussing something called 'the replication crisis' about large scale studies.

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Following up the discussion with Andy Rhodes this week it's a second episode about the police. My original plan was to edit both of them to get one episode about the profession but both were too good to chop up. So I want to flag that It's kind of about work culture but also kind of just a brilliant chat with a fascinating person. Consider it as a box set with the other police episode. When it gets into its flow it covers dog shows, walking buses and all manner of brilliance.

Stevyn Colgan joined the police after a bet from his dad - which he explains. I was put on him by our last guest Andy Rhodes who told me about ways they used dog shows to reduce the tension on council estates. Rather than chop it down to just cover the way that Stevyn led innovation in the workplace I've just left it intact. He's too interesting for me to butcher the chat.

Stevyn is the perfect example of a multi level life via his illustrations he became friends with Douglas Adams and ended up being a writer on the TV show QI. He wrote a book about his police problem solving unit work called One Step ahead. He's actually just published a novel called a Murder to Die For.

I'm not gonna lie we spent ages one summer evening sitting in the pub garden of a Amersham pub. My intro is me reminding him about this podcast but the chat it provokes is quite interesting.

If you want to learn more sign up for our newsletter at eatsleepworkrepeat.fm - thanks for listening.

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This is the first of two episodes on the police this week. One on dealing with stress in 'blue light' professions, one on how to be creative in stressful environments.

Andy Rhodes is the Chief Constable of Lancashire - and has responsibility for the wellbeing initiative in the UK police force. He talks through the challenges of policing under pressure. What do you do to stop police profiling people they encounter? The answer starts with how you treat them at work. I think you'll be inspired with the lead that Andy is taking.

To hear more about the evidence based approach to wellbeing in the police go to the Oscar Kilo website.

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We’re talking work culture in different ways for the next few episodes. The next two episodes after this are in the police force. But today’s guest is the best selling author of the year - Adam Kay. This is Going to Hurt : Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor has sold over a million copies. It’s also won the readers’ choice book of the year this year. So there’s a chance you’ve read it and if so you will love the discussion with Adam Kay because he takes us into the working environment in hospitals. If you’ve not read it I could not recommend this beautiful, funny, principled book more.

Adam explains in the book that the title Junior Doctor is a touch misleading - everyone who isn’t a consultant is titled a junior doctor. He is successful comedy writer who wrote the book 7 years after leaving the health service after a terrible terrible day at work. He wrote it because he found underpaid overworked health workers being politicised by the vampires who run government. Specifically the multi-millionaire former health secretary who claimed that in some way that doctors were greedy. The book is the funniest thing you’ll read this year and we covered that but we also talked through the working culture in hospitals.

US listeners will know that the issue of single payer health care is a hot topic in the US - in the UK we have the NHS and it’s worth saying as Adam says it is a source of national pride. We just need to fund it properly.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I joined Adam for a chat at restaurant in West London.

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How can painting the walls of a company change their culture? We explore with Jez Groom today's guest.

An episode this week on behavioural science. It was prompted a little by discussions with Seth Godin and others. It was thinking can you change the culture in organisations by the way you engineer choices available to people - and I’m speaking to a behavioural scientist about these things.

First a bit of background - we discuss a reading list in the show and I’ve included it in the show notes but it’s worth giving you an intro. One of the best books I love on behavioural science is YES by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini.

In that book they spend chapter after chapter going through how the language that we use to invite people to do things has a big impact on what they subsequently do. TV shopping channels used to say ‘operators are waiting to take your call’ but they realised that that language made customers envisage rows of idle call handlers waiting for any sucker to buy something. So they changed it to ‘if lines are busy please try again later’. Similarly hotels evolved the notes about towels that you see when you stay as a guest. A lot of these things are built on the principles of influence made famous by Robert Cialdini.

The authors split hotel rooms, half with a note saying please recycle your towel by hanging it up, the other used social proof by saying ‘most guests at our hotel help the environment by reusing their towels’. They looked at the results. The people who got the social proof message were 26% more likely to recycle their towel. They found that they could easily improve on this by using principles of reciprocation - saying the hotel would make a donation if they reused the towel, and then further by saying ‘to thank you we’ve already made a donation’. And a weird specificity ‘by saying the majority of the people who used THIS room had reused their towel.

So if decision architecture can play a part in these things, can it make an impact on work. There may be decision architecture around your office. Maybe there are fewer waste paper bins than before - or you’re encouraged to use different recycle bins that are further away by the company alerting you to the benefits of these things.

Today’s guest is Jez Groom who runs the behavioural science company Cowry Consulting.

Jez told me at his old company Ogilvy they’d realised they could make breakthroughs in this area when they had introduced a hand stamp on the hand of workers in a food manufacture plant. No matter how much workers were told they needed to wash their hands to prevent kids getting ill or transferring dirt. But only 60% were doing it. They introduced a stamp a brown coloured e coli virus bug. It took 30 seconds to wash off. The bacterial count tumbled but most of this was kept after the 3 weeks of them doing it. The stamp had changed behaviour.

Link in to Jez

Find out more about Cowry Consulting

The books we discussed

The Joy of Work

Yes! 60 Secrets from Science of Persuasion

Pigeons getting variable rewards

Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Freakonomics

Predictably Irrational

Nudge

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Seth Godin has been one of the world's freshest thinkers since before the internet was on solid food.

After a first career packaging books, he then rose to his own fame creating permission marketing.

His blog is many people's favourite stop on the web bus route picking up a million passengers every day.

We use his latest book This is Marketing as the model to bring to reinventing your workplace culture. What's the way to use his influence strategies to improve your job?

The chat is brilliant and goes everywhere. Clearly Eat Sleep Work Repeat isn’t a marketing podcast but everyone can learn something from Seth.

Contact the show podcast@eatsleepworkrepeat.fm

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Contact the show podcast@eatsleepworkrepeat.fm

This week's episode features the iconic Teresa Amabile - she's a professor at Harvard Business School. Originally educated and employed as a chemist, Teresa received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.

If you're interested in her work this YouTube clip is a great start point.

Before the chat with Professor Amabile we talk through the news in work culture this week. Here's the explosive article on Netflix:

WSJ on Netflix

WSJ on Google's walkouts

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Dan Cable is the author of the life affirming and brilliant Alive at Work - one of the most inspiring visions of what work could look like. The discussion covers big themes of purpose and motivation but brings simple practical tips. What are the simple things that any of us could do to our induction processes at work? How could we encourage our teams to bring their selves to work.

I mention two articles. One by Sarah O'Connor in the FT and this one by Josh Hall about compulsory wellness.

You can get in touch with Bruce here on Twitter. All of the previous episodes are available on the website EatSleepWorkRepeat.fm

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Today’s guest is regarded as one of the most influential management thinkers in the world largely because he considers themes and human behaviours that others avoid discussing. Jeffrey Pfeffer is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He’s author of books like Management BS, Power and most recently Dying for a Paycheck and it’s the last two books that we mainly discuss in today’s chat.

Read Dying for a Paycheck and Power

Jeffrey mentions this New York Times article about the stress of someone in the legal profession.

His book Power has become a global best seller largely because it is a manual for the Machiavellian. It’s a modern day version of Niccolò Machiavelli’s 16th century book The Prince. It’s not that Pfeffer believes this is what we should behave like to be our best selves but rather if we don’t behave like this we’re going to be exploited.

In the course notes for Jeffrey's stanford class on power he says that "insufficient sensitivity to and skill coping with power have cost Stanford graduates promotions opportunities and even their jobs".

Fundamentally the mistake we’re all making according to Pfeffer is believing that the world is fair. I know I’m guilty of this. Whether you watch US politics or British politics but I certainly find myself looking at current events thinking that a reckoning will come when the good guys will win and sort things out. Spoiler alert. The good guys don’t win. And the source for that point is history.

Pfeffer's belief is that in business they don't win so arm yourself. He believes that leaders often ascend to their position not through an innate goodness but because they understand the rules of power.

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If you like this the easiest way to get it is to subscribe on Apple podcasts - give us a rating while you’re there.

Zeynep Ton is a Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

She studies the retail sector and the way that some firms have invested in paying more and doing more for their workers. She studied firms like QuikTrip, Trader Joes, Mercador in Spain - she found that firms that treat their workers better achieve better results.

Quik Trips profit is double the retail average - all of her firms are more profitable and show consistent growth. And this is work that needs doing in 2012 The Independent reported that only 1 in 7 British supermarket workers earned a living wage.

We’ll talk about how they make their jobs happier but the key parts are they make some key decisions upfront (1) offer less (2) standardise and empower their teams (3) they train their workers to do all of the jobs and (4) they operate with slack - with spare capacity.

When I studied Zeynep's work - and even more so when I chatted to her I thought there's something in this that every single company can use.

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Eat Sleep Work Repeat is hosted by Bruce Daisley, Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook. Sign up to the newsletter

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

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Professor Adam Grant is the most important business writer in the world - a man who says his study is focussing on how to make work suck less.

Adam is author of books like Give and Take, Option B, Originals, he's also the host of a chart topping podcast on work culture called Work Life with TED.

Adam Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated professor for seven straight years - his books have told over a million copies .

Give and Take examines why helping others drives our success. Originals explores how individuals champion new ideas and leaders fight groupthink; Option B, with Sheryl Sandberg, is a #1 bestseller on facing adversity and building resilience.

For more about Bridgwater read here http://uk.businessinsider.com/bridgewater-ranked-employees-by-performance-2018-3

The full episode is live on the website: eatsleepworkrepeat.fm

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Around 12 months ago myself and Sue Todd created the new work manifesto. It was an attempt to start the debate about simple things that we can change. You can find it on the podcast website eatsleepworkrepeat.fm.

It's had a briliant response, research companies have asked to help validate it, different professions like doctors and police have been in touch asking if they can adapt it for their working. Lots of companies have told me they've been trying it out with their teams.

One person contacted me and offered to share the experience and learnings of the New Work Manifesto in their team. And that was Tom Kegode. I went down one lunch time a few weeks ago to meet Tom and his team at Lloyds Bank Group. Tom is an innovations programme manager who has helped share the new work manifesto across LBG.

You're going to hear discussion of various parts of the manifesto and the way that people at Lloyds are trying to make work more positive and enjoyable. Round the table were Lloyds employees Sam, Kate, Miranda, Verica, Ben, Jess, Heather, Shirley, Alastair, Dave and of course Tom himself.

If you're interested in using the New Work Manifesto it all on the website, it's not copyright. Use it, change it, remix it, edit it but whatever you do please hit me on linked in or via twitter to tell me how you got on.

This is the last in the series. I'll be back after the summer with a stellar list of the people who have done the best research on work, laughter, philosophy and workplace creativity.

if you want to hear those episodes you're best subscribing via your podcast app.

I appreciate you listening. Please do get in touch.

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Two practical case studies this week. Businesses who have pulled back the curtain to show how they brought Purpose and Autonomy to life. Brilliant examples of companies trying new things and having success from them.

Rachel Bremer is the Communications Director at ASOS. She talks about how they re-energised 4000 young, ambitious employees to keep the business on an incredible growth path.

Laurie Young is the Development Director of Thoughtbot. He explains that they made one change that allowed them to get 5 days work done in 4 days - and what happened next.

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