MAKE WORK BETTER. Eat Sleep Work Repeat is the best podcast about workplace culture - it's been listened to millions of times.
Bruce Daisley brings a curious mind to discussions about our jobs and the role they play in our lives.
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MAKE WORK BETTER. Eat Sleep Work Repeat is the best podcast about workplace culture - it's been listened to millions of times.
Bruce Daisley brings a curious mind to discussions about our jobs and the role they play in our lives.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This is the second part of an interview with Professor Alex Haslam, the world's leading voice on the study of social identity.
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:
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.
Simon Gilbody talks loneliness at work
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.
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 sponsored episode is brought to you by Deliveroo for Work
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.
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.
Delighted to post this small conversation with Nick Shackleton-Jones. Nick posts brilliantly witty rants on TikTok that are just the best things I hear about work and the futility of bureaucracy.
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 TikTok - this is the good stuff
Best posts to check out:
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If we shifted our focus from the individual to the collective how different would our results at work be?
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
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It’s been a while since I revisited a conversation on offices and how our physical workspaces are evolving. Disruption has made the property business hugely raise their games. With 20-25% of Gen Z workers self reporting having issues of neurodivergency the office is trying to prove that it's still the centre of great workplace cultures.
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
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Last month the FInancial Times published an article by John Burn Murdoch in the form of an analysis of personality data, specifically looking at what are styled the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
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
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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.
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.
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I’m often asked asked which company cultures I admire, especially as I tend to be critical of the culture inside tech firms. It’s easy to have good vibes in small firms but organisations who manage to deliver good culture at scale are the ones I’m most interested in. I often call out Nando’s or Octopus Energy.
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
Take a listen, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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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.
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.
More about marathoner Katherine Switzer
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"There's this concept called inbox zero, where everyone tries to get to their inbox down to zero. But I would suggest that a more noble pursuit is that of calendar zero".
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.
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
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The next two podcasts I see as a piece with each other, today is about meaning the next one is about mattering. Collectively I feel they present serious substance about the foundations of good culture.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Michael Morris's book Tribal covers the codes that bond humans together. It has been shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award 2024. It came runner-up to 'Supremacy' by Parmy Olson.
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
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Everywhere we look we see someone who is outraged - and plenty of that anger makes its way to the workplace.
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
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