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5 steps to a more effective workplace · Humanity Working

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're good mics, man.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Must be really loud dogs.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Good mics are loud dogs.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, guys, the last time we were together, we spoke about burnout, uh, but mainly in terms of what individuals need to do.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: But what about the organization?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, first off, Paul, why do you think the organizations even have a role uh in in this burnout?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a it's a good question.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are wasting time on social media, you'll probably see quite a lot about it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I think there's this there's this debate that's going on, particularly on LinkedIn and some other channels, right now, as to whether companies have a role in, for want of a better way of phrasing it, improving the lives of their employees beyond paying them.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you'll see quite a lot of chatter and feedback about the idea that this is a highly individual responsibility, the idea of getting up each day and being motivated to go to work and um and that it's part of just doing good work um that each of us should take personal responsibility for.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't particularly want to get into the debate as to whether that is uh whether that is academically true or not, or whether it should be uh should be the case or not.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that there is this, you know, discussion that has been going on in in, I guess, the world for for probably more than a century now about the role of individual responsibility versus the role of the organizations that we participate in.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also the practical nature of what it means to have um effective employees or ineffective employees.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are an organization that has a set of goals, um and people form part of that uh set of goals in any way, shape, or form, which is the vast, vast majority of organizations, people play a very significant role in them, no matter how much they've got into robotics and technology and automation.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's still a very strong role for people in almost every large organization.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you are in that uh that world where you've got basically a bunch of people that need to produce a bunch of things in order for you to be effective as an organization, that means that your effectiveness as an organization is directly tied to the effectiveness of the people that work in that organization.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got a choice.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can either sit back on the sidelines and say, okay, well, um, we just expect you to be effective and we'll pay you if you are.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or the other alternative is to actually um start using the resources that you have as an organization to actually help improve the effectiveness of the people that work for it.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so the reality is that the most successful companies um that need people will be the ones that can get people to show up well every day.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you could argue that that has always been the case.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it probably has always been the case.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: What's different is uh, as we've alluded to in previous podcasts, um the uh nature of the skills that people need in order to be able to accomplish that.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason that that, of course, has changed is because uh the nature of our work has changed dramatically, as we've discussed many times.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so as we've moved into this uh world where we're kind of moving away from lots and lots of task-based work where you could simply measure the success of people on did they perform this number of tasks in a particular uh in the amount of time that they were scheduled to do the work, towards this idea of you know, outcomes and driving outcomes uh over the course of weeks or months and doing so in very flexible ways, as we moved into that new world, then the set of skills that you need in order to be able to thrive in it become much more nuanced, much more difficult, and are not necessarily just there with us uh on a day-to-day basis without help.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really just a reflection of the way in which work has changed and the fact that we're kind of moving away from this idea of a pure talent war into, I would say, an effectiveness war.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that that uh the companies that have the most effective employees will win is something that organizations are starting to get their heads around now.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what can they do in order to be able to improve the effectiveness of people?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and even if they're just the fact that they're talking about it is a big difference because you said you mentioned there, you know, uh maybe it was always there that you wanted people to show up well.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: We just didn't talk about it or acknowledge it, you know, in in any way.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's we've been forced to.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you guys published something also a while back that I found interesting that talks about this, which is like the five steps to a more effective workplace.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, how did you discover it and put it into that kind of category?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's interesting.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's been a journey.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, our focus from the start has always been on the individual.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, all of our primary research and secondary research is based on what is making an individual human as personally effective as they can be on an everyday basis.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, um, having worked with a large group of individuals, we have a large amount of data uh as a result of that.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um, that led us to our mission and kind of what we're up to at Billion Minds, which is to help people optimize their work in the context of their broader lives.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's that's been kind of the one in viable thing that we've had throughout our journey, um, is we're helping that individual, uh, and we do that through a combination of software tooling, master classes, learning, support, accountability, all the things that are necessary for behavioral change.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Because in the end, change is an individual thing, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why our focus was on uh on the individual.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um But it what was interesting is that as we discovered it and really met what led to that particular um that particular piece on the five steps to more effective workplaces how do we translate our research into more organizational speak, if you like?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um what organizations can do and what role they have to play.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: And we had a very unique opportunity to present at uh an NC Sherm conference.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that kind of forced us to develop this and start to think about it through that, because that's really what people were there to hear about.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: They really wanted to know what they as HR leaders, what they as uh organizational leaders can do to help their employees.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't think anybody disagrees with the problem statement anymore, guys.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um people are burning out at record levels and and you know, people are leaving the workplace um even without destinations.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's really very little argument on that.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: But now it's the it's what what can individuals do to help themselves and what can organizations do to help their individuals.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so this is I think the most interesting part, Matt.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd say what open up a search and just type in the organization.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, like what's the definition of an organization?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a movie from 1971 on imdv.com.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess it knows you well.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um think more of like uh like Webster's definition, if you don't mind that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: An organized body of people with a particular purpose, especially a business, society, association, etc.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so uh what's it's organization is a body of people.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's a body of individual people, each with their own journey, um, each with their own state, uh, state of mind, um, state of health.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and so as we've kind of gone through this and looked at our research, you know, we still believe that it comes down fundamentally to the individual, but there are also things that organizations can do at aggregate to help, because at the end of the day, an organization is just a collection of people.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's funny.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I mean, it's weird that we had to go through this to figure that out a little bit.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like it just didn't seem to be thought of that way for a long time.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um until maybe the pandemic, maybe, maybe this forced us to really examine it in earnest and uh and start to change the way we think about it, which is you know a beautiful thing that would help everybody.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: So us sort of starting from the ground up in the way in which the way in which we did, and us having like one-on-one conversations of support and you know, to provide support and accountability around personal effectiveness really helped us understand the relationship that people have um between work and the rest of their lives.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've spoken on previous podcasts around it's it's not really kind of like a work-life balance, it's really work in the work in the context of your life.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it became very clear to us in these in these conversations that that that doing the work in the context of your broader life is the challenging thing now, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas before the challenging thing might have been might have been different because there was greater separation between the two, right?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: People still obviously have had challenges as you know, uh in and around their work and the rest of their lives for forever.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: But that blurring of the two became the one of the biggest single challenges that that people were getting.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that perhaps organizations felt like they had the luxury before of being able to say, look, we're we're responsible for you when you're at work and you're responsible for yourself outside of work, um, and that those two things are very different.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: But now with this with this blurring of these two things happening, um the people themselves are not making that separation so much.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so for organizations to make that separation, it just doesn't really make sense anymore.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'd suspect that the main reason that that separation has existed is because it makes a lot of a lot of other things a lot easier, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, um there's obviously privacy concerns, there's you know, respecting people's boundaries.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are all of these things that are associated um with delving deeper into what people are doing 24 hours a day versus when they're working for you.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it becomes a much more difficult and nuanced challenge once you start thinking about the whole life of the person versus the individual life, uh individual part of it.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll get into that part, I think, more in more detail as we go through the five steps.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's an interesting compartmental compartmentalization they have to do previously.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's like now we're opening up a few other compartments they have to be aware of that maybe they didn't before.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's hear like what are the what are these five steps?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Tell everyone what these five steps are.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the first thing I'll say is that these five steps are all practical.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it that's the very, very important aspect of all five.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: It should be things that you can implement that aren't too ethereal, that aren't too just out there theoretical, so so very practical.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the first one is to re-examine readiness.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, second is to consider the whole person, the third is to emphasize rest.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: The fourth is to reimagine structure, and the fifth is to find the why.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I wasn't writing it down, but we gotta let's go through each one of those one at a time.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's talk about the first one you mentioned, re-examine readiness.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: What's that about?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so in the past, um particularly in the workplace, I think we've generally thought of readiness as a set of skills that are associated with doing a particular job.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that would mean, for example, if you're a salesperson, you get sales training.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a marketing person, you get marketing training.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a technologist, uh maybe you're a software developer, you get training on the platform or training on particular languages or things like that.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, um this is part of what is uh what is necessary to do your job.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um But then of course, there's this other thing, which is in addition to the skills that you have that are associated with your specific role, then there are the skills that you need in order to be able to do work effectively in this new world.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so the first um foray um that has been consistently done in some in some larger organizations into this, I would say, has probably been mindset training.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So think of things like grid and growth mindset, things of that nature.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And these programs are are useful um because they give people an opportunity to be able to develop skills of of resilience, for example, within the workplace or adaptability within the workplace.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there is some there's some usefulness to them, but we believe that while they're helpful, they're not necessarily sufficient in terms of uh of what's needed to be able to show up every day really, really effectively.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the limitations associated with them is that they're really centered around this idea of building in that adaptability and resilience into your mind no matter what happens.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But they tend to lack um the focus on practical skills training.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what practically do you do each day to be as effective as you can?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: What practically do you do each day to optimize the day, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So how, for example, do you optimize your meetings?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: How, for example, do you optimize your routine?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Those types of things are much more, much more practical in nature.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, in a sense, if you were to compare it to another uh to another discipline, let's say, for example, that you were uh that you were an athlete, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you got um, let's say, some training on uh let's say the mental side of the resilience side of being an effective athlete, dealing with adversity, dealing with um the ability to be able to uh adapt and modify as uh as things happen to the to the other team.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got some specific training related to your uh to the sport that you're doing.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're doing uh soccer, you've got some specific soccer skills training.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: The piece that you would be missing um would necessarily in this example that I was giving you was athleticism, right?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, you haven't necessarily been taught uh how to be as fit as humanly possible.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's that third element, that practical element of like you need it really, you need it no matter who you are, no matter what role you have, you need that kind of set of practical skills that isn't really addressed by the mindset training and isn't addressed by the specific training.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we think that inside all organizations, in addition to the specific skills associated with that particular job, in addition to um the training around their mindset, they need that set of practical skills in order to be able to get through their day as effectively as possible.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that piece is the piece that is missing inside most organizations today.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really I think that's really, really interesting.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: The the levels of examination required once you get through the first layer is so multifaceted and so deep into the the way you work.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: You could run into one thing, for example, but not be good at managing your calendar and blow up the whole rest of your plan.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it you need to really look at all that.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really great insight.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and the irony is it's kind of hidden too, right?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, let's say that you're in an organization and you've done the piece that uh is is the training associated with the core skills you need for your job, and you've done, let's say, grit and growth mindset and so on, then and you're and just and you're just lacking this third piece, this set, this set of practical skills.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the funny thing is you can do your, you can clearly do your job, right?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then if things, if if on a day-to-day basis things are not going as well or as effectively as they are, you can fall back on that training on grit, for example, to be able to deal with the challenges associated with it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact that you've actually not received this stuff that actually helps you do it better and more effectively, to help you get through your day better and more effectively is sort of hidden because as you hit the adversity, the grit training helps you deal with it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're saying is that it's not just a question of making you able to deal with adversity, but how about having some practical training that helps reduce the amount of adversity you have to deal with in the first place?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of uh that kind of training is the is the is the piece that is missing inside most uh inside most organizations.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds has taken over a dozen years of research into the habits of the most effective among us in this new world where work and life are merging.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Employees from five different countries around the world are using Billion Minds to help them start each day with a purpose and end it with accomplishment.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you or your team wants to discover how billion minds can help employees optimize their work in the context of their broader life, go to billionminds.com slash learn more today.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's billionminds.com slash L E A R N M O R E.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the the next one in on the list there was uh consider the whole person.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's dig into that one a little bit.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this dovetails nicely into the the first one, uh, because it really comes down to a set of skills that individuals need.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, when you think about the term work-life balance, let's start with that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that would imply that you've got work on one side and non-work on another side, and you've got to bounce across those things.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not a very realistic way to look at it now, that these environments are effectively merging.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so we know that our employees are parents, they are partners, they're friends.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: In some cases, they might even have other jobs and side hustles and hobbies, and they've got very complicated lives.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so the the challenge is how can you optimize the work that you do for the organization across all those things?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so it starts off with just um recognizing the fact that uh people's lives are very complicated and oftentimes chaotic, and then accepting the fact that personal endeavors or work that you do uh in a non-work setting, so work that you do in your personal life, uh, for example, may conflict with work that an employee could be doing for their job, or it may be a prerequisite.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I remember during the pandemic, I used to say that you know, sometimes doing the dishes will come between you and executing a million-dollar deal, you know, and that's factual, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's some things that you need to do around the house, and especially when you're working from home, you're homeschooling your kids and going through all that.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you have to recognize, employers need to recognize that there's non-work-related stuff that may be a prerequisite to a work-related thing, right?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so then it comes down to, again, going back to mapping back to the first step of re examining readiness.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: What are the skills that people need to have to manage effectively uh the work across their broader life?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what are the sets of tools that they need?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, have we really rethought what those tools are?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because really, what it comes down to it in the end, uh in Employer should care that an individual employee is bringing their best self to work.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: And their best self is only going to be the one that is optimized across their entire.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think a couple of other points on that that I think are really interesting is that as we shift into this new world of work, um it's entirely possible that your employees are not have not just got the rest of their life outside of work to deal with, but they've got the rest of their life outside of your work, which might include working for somebody else as well.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um we think of um employees as people first, and those people have a whole bunch of different roles that they have.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be a parent, it could be a partner, it could be a friend, etc.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it may also include more than one job.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And particularly if you look at a family unit today, oftentimes the number of jobs that is being performed by the family unit exceeds the number of people in that family unit.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that becomes something that is very, very uh complex to manage.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it is very, very old school to think that um you're going to number one, pay your users the minimum amount that will allow you to get re reasonable people working for you.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, expect those people to be solely engaged and solely invested inside you as an organization.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Simply put, if you're not, if you're not paying people top dollar, they may need to do other jobs in order to be able to make ends meet.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so um this balance thing is extremely complicated.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course, when you add on the fact that people do side hustles for other reasons, they do side hustles because they're interested, they do side hustles because they're trying to build a set of skills that will allow them to move in a different direction as and when uh they want to do a career change, right?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's all of these different reasons why people, why people do these things.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the but if you look at the lives across the 24 hours, those lives will be extremely complicated.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now the other thing we have to uh envision and imagine here is um what it means as an organization to consider the whole person.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it definitively doesn't mean being nosy.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean um uh like crossing boundaries that employees want to have between work and the rest of their lives.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that you're forced uh as a manager to be the friend of your uh of your employee.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: What it really means is that the environment that you create in the workplace um is one that reflects the messy reality of um of the employees that work there, right?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And allow them to feel comfortable in the workplace as part of the context of their broader lives.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it really means, whereby you can show up for work knowing that you have this side gig, knowing that you've got these challenges around the rest of your lives, maybe with your kids, with your parents, with your friends or whatever.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: But sh know that you can show up for work and work be a safe space as you're navigating the rest of that life.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And know that you've got the support from your workplace to be able to do that.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that in mind, Paul, it it as you were talking, it reminded me that, or it made me think, I wonder how much of this will effectively leak into or start to become more a part of the, for lack of a better word, interview or screening process as you bring people in, because it strikes me that the first couple months of a person's job are always very slow.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: You touched on something really interesting there, which is like, okay, when when you're interviewing somebody and when they come on board.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, when you're interviewing some uh somebody, there are certainly some things that you can uh you can do to help um gain uh an understanding of the employees you're bringing uh bringing along.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um resilience and grit and things like that are things that people obviously are looking for as part uh as part of the employees they're bringing on board.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but actually um just the ability to be able to um to use the types of tools that um that we're talking about here to be open to the idea of having practical tools to get through their day is something that you could also test uh test on as well.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the other thing you touched on, which is really important, is that as people come into a new role, that is actually the most uh yes, it's a period of time where they're less productive and affected ways.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's a major life event, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens to us when we when we undergo a major life event, our stress levels go up.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: It uh reflects and it's reflected in terms of how we balance the different components of our lives.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: It can cause struggles in other parts of our lives.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you take on a new job, it's more stressful, maybe that causes issues outside of work, which rebounds back into the workplace.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that stuff is part of what you go through as you go into a new job.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so some of the most enlightened companies that we're working with are recognizing that fact, or recognizing the fact that what they do with their employees in the first two to three months is a huge, huge indicator as what as to what kind of success they will have with those employees over a longer period of time.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they need to reimagine what that first, let's say, three months needs to look like uh with the employees.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you know how senior executives always talk about what they're gonna do in their first hundred days and they're measured about what they do in the first hundred days, even presidents are measured on what they do in their first hundred days.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we think that what you do with employees in their first hundred days and that experience that you give people, uh your employees in the first hundred days is probably equally as critical.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not something that we focus on as much.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, you got to flip the script a little bit.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what are you gonna do in the first hundred days?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do for you in the first hundred days to make sure I made a good hire?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: To make sure that, you know, because we know we've seen the numbers on how expensive it is to hire people and lose them within the first year, which is probably happening.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you're doing it virtually now.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing it, you know, in a lot of places where the person isn't, you can't bring them into an office to absorb the culture or to get that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's yeah, let's do it, let's let's do a part on that.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot of interesting findings around that.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the next one uh I can definitely say has been a major factor for me is is is emphasizing rest.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know how much of that is up to the organization to control again.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this again kind of fits into that that category where I think organizations are sometimes reluctant to even have a role or take a position in it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course you factor in the fact that for so long inside uh inside the workplace, um, the idea of of putting in superhuman effort has been lauded.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's creating, you know, creating heroes out of people.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all of that has is is something that now through the influence of you know organizations like Thrive Global and some various other uh companies that are uh that are really, really trying to push this more effectively, we're starting to uh we're starting to reimagine it a little bit.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say that some of the first uh forays into this um have been a little bit problematic.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: So a good example that I would give is um the organizations that that do uh emphasize things like unlimited uh personal time off.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you'd think, well, you know, that sounds like a great idea.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like an organization that is really trying to uh to recognize some of the principles that we've been talking about.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: But what we found is that um as you kind of uh remove traditional structures of things like uh, for example, you're expected to take you know 15 to 20 days of vacation a year, um, once you remove those things, then culture becomes like the the most dominant thing.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if the culture um continuously emphasizes um the superhuman efforts of individual employees and lords them for it and rewards them for it, um then as a result, you're gonna wind up with a whole bunch of people that are overworking to the point of burnout, or certainly overworking to the point of being less effective on a day-to-day basis.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um the leadership, the role of leadership here is hugely important as well.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so if the CEO and the senior executives are seen to be working like enormous numbers of hours, then that also tends to kind of trickle down the organization.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's the classic uh do as I say, don't do as I do.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it bec it becomes embedded, it becomes embedded into the culture because the senior executives are seen to be working all hours.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it is something that organizations really need to think about.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: If they're going to emphasize rest, it does move, uh, it does move beyond words.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now we know and and uh what and we tend to emphasize what sports scientists have known about this for years, that um rest is an absolutely essential foundation for continued execution.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you'll see this yourself.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you've been, for example, emphasizing sleep over the last year or so, you will have seen uh the results that come from that.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: They don't come immediately, but they do come after a while.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: You start to get more energy, you start to do more work, you start to do more things, even though effectively you're taking an hour out of the day to sleep a bit more.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um these are the kind of things that um that absolutely do have a significant impact.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And organizations basically the way, the only real way to do it is to model their behavior.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you if you model the behavior from the highest points of the organization all the way down, you build out your structures and your processes with all of that in mind, you end up with significantly better results.
• 33:04
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• 33:08
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• 33:10
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• 33:23
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• 33:27
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• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's a book by uh Matthew Walker called Why We Sleep that absolutely changed my whole thought process around sleep um in the last year and and just fascinating the power of sleep.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then you also mentioned something which is uh remember the Seinfeld when George Costanza left his car parked at Yankee Stadium for a couple weeks and he got all these promotions because they thought he was there day and night.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is exactly it's classic.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's hit on the fourth one.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, reimagined structure.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's that all about?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, this is my favorite one.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's my favorite one because it's it's I think this is one where we had uh one of our biggest aha moments.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: And first when we looked at structure and and versus flexibility, uh, we looked at it through the lens of technology.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we've talked about this a bit in season one, is um if you look at the evolution of technology, not not even going a century back, but just going you know, 20 years back, um, the trend has been uh technology that introduces more flexibility.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that flexibility as a term ended up being lauded.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it's just like flexible is better, right?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and in some cases that it can be.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but the interesting thing that that came out in our findings is that there's a byproduct to that too.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a byproduct of flexibility.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so when you completely erode structure, then you're really putting the onus on the individual employee uh to effectively manage that flexible environment.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then they each have their own individual journey.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's an interesting pendulum swing that we've seen.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, like you go back, the reason why we have so much structure in the workplace is pretty simple.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: When you go back to uh industrial revolution, we had large manufacturing companies and things like that were the uh the most common.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then these large conglomerate organizations became very common.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: So these are huge companies, and you just cannot manage that size or the complexity of like engineering manufacturing without a great deal of structure.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's different now.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean, I'm certainly still manufacturing organizations exist and are extremely important, but now we have a billion knowledge workers, um, and that same structure um doesn't necessarily work for knowledge work.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so then what do we do?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: We swing the pendulum the complete other way and say, all right, well, now take your cell phone, take your laptop, you can work wherever you want and complete flexibility, but there's an incredible burden that that puts on the individual.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, you know, our our thought process on this is that when we say reimagine structure, it's don't think structure bad flex good.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the wrong lens.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's how can you help people develop the skill to create their own structure, something that's personal to them?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that could be something as simple as you might do a complete inventory of everything new that's come into your life first thing in the morning.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the day, you have an activity that you do to close out your day.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's it, you know, reviewing your inbox or um or or preparing for your next day, we like to say, um, you know, start tomorrow today.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so these are these are skills that individuals need to learn.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: They need to personalize their own structure.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so, what organizations need to think about in terms of flexibility is that how can you be flexible enough that you can allow for the individuals to create their own structure and what do what skills do they need to learn to be able to do that?
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And the goal here is not to impose structure, right?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: But provide the flexibility for structure.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's a very I think we're gonna have to do a podcast on every one of these because it there's so many things to delve into there in terms of of that flexibility overlap where it it's a blessing and a curse.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And but you are responsible now.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, you can work anywhere, great.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I want to work?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is this the best decision to work?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and now is my day just melting into, you know, as we've talked about before, leaking into your whole day and finding that balance or whatever.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: So and where do I do my best work?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and those answers are different based on different work styles, different work modalities.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, you could be a better writer in the morning from a Starbucks and a, you know, a better communicator from your home office at two o'clock in the afternoon.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, those are things that each individual needs to learn about themselves and then build a requisite structure around that optimization.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also hard to be flexible within the structure because if you're an employer and you expect that people are flexibly available for meetings between nine to five, it's not that flexible.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not effective in meetings between nine to five, you have to figure out how to make sure that that fits.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this like Venn diagram overlap of when it can be really optimized for an organization and and uh and and make the the most of that situation.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, it's very, very interesting.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Totally agree.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: I uh the other thing, of course, we have to recognize is the fact that people's mental health is uh is uh directly associated with this.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of evidence out there that shows that a complete lack of structure is associated with poor mental health outcomes.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um work sometimes gave us structure.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, uh part of what uh has happened uh negatively to some people's mental health in the past when they've retired from work has been that they've lost that structure and there's nothing to replace it.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um Ryan's point about like giving people the skills to create their own structure is not just important in terms of the uh of um allowing them to do their best work, but it's also important in terms of associated with uh maintaining their mental health.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously the last one uh really important to help employees is is find the why.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that for a bit.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is arguably the most important one.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's uh perhaps one of the biggest challenges that we've seen with unstructured and ambiguous work is people tend to lose track of why they're doing it.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um unfortunately, most companies tend to shortcut this a bit, uh, just passing the responsibility down to managers.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so every organization is gonna have some uh high-level business goals, uh, outcomes that the organization is trying to achieve, and then cascade those down.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um but just cascading those down and putting them in the hands of managers is not necessarily a recipe for success unless the manager is very, very good at um you know turning those into things that their direct employees will resonate with.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what I mean by that.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's very difficult, especially in a large matrixed organization, uh, to associate this one PowerPoint slide that you're developing today to saving lives.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: But uh if you work for a large pharmaceutical organization that produces life-saving therapies for people, very well is the case, or very well maybe the case, and perhaps is the case that that work that you're doing, even though it's a small bit of work, a 20-minute body of work, um, does ladder up to the overall objective.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but unfortunately, people aren't necessarily thinking about those things in context of their work on a daily basis.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: And and some of it has to do with the lack of reinforcement, um a lack of visibility.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times you have your fiscal year kickoff and you go through all these objectives for the year and then you kind of forget about them.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not front and center in everything that you do.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: So part of it's visibility, but the other part of it is personalization.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, getting to the point where you can answer the question of why do you do what you do?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: That ladders up to a larger organizational objective.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we're really big on writing your own outcomes, um, things that are personal to the individual that have the same outcome in terms of the result as it ladders up to a larger goal or larger objective.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but something that's inspirational and something that is a common refrain in the individual employee's life.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a skill that um we have not seen a great deal of in managers because it simply wasn't taught.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, being expert objective and outcome writers, um knowing enough about behavioral change management to know uh how to get these individual employees to craft their own outcomes that will reinforce and allow them to do some self-coaching.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so yeah, the why is is really again, it comes down to being personal.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's obviously the organizational why, but can we get to a point where we personalize why I'm doing rudimentary everyday activities and being very motivated to do them, even if they are perfunctory, because you know why you're doing it.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Very important, very important stuff.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm there's a there's a YouTube video by Simon Sinek and a book of the same name, I think uh Find the Why, or uh I can't remember.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll maybe start with why.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Start with why, yeah, you're right.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um really cool stuff, and it it just changes the whole thought process about why you're doing something.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it struck me as you were talking that you know, we are talking about knowledge workers uh predominantly in this new paradigm, but I think I think it it goes across the board and probably is a good reason why we're having this you know great reshuffle or great resignation or whatever you want to call it.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because people are reimagining their why, because they were struck in the face with uh really making sure they were doing everything for the right reasons everywhere.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: If every employer thought this way, everybody would be better at their jobs, it feels like to me, right?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: What's a really important thing like this?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you don't help your employees find their why, then they're gonna find it themselves, and it may not have anything to do with your organization.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: But um that that that's part of this from a retention consideration is um if you can really create strong meaning um from the the work that your employees are doing in connection to a why, you're gonna have a much uh greater likelihood that you're gonna retain those employees.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um but if you fail to do that and you fail to make it personal, then they're gonna, like you said, they're on a mission right now.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's on kind of a personal what does it all mean mission right now.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and if they find it somewhere else, um then you're probably gonna lose that employee.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then I guess lastly, what's the difference between good attrition and bad attrition?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it'd be better to find out earlier, anyways.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you've got an employee um that is never going to find their why, they truly don't enjoy the work that they're doing, and they truly don't resonate with the company's mission, you as an organization would be better served to have that employee exit the organization.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you can you can identify uh if someone can replace that and become a good employee that's bought in.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it's better to find that out earlier, right?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so even if you do find out through the course of helping them find their why that their why isn't in the organization, that's still good.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right, lots to think about there.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where can folks find this article that we're talking about?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it's it's gonna be on our website.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we'll also add it to the show notes for the podcast as well.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this is something that we'll go into a lot more detail on in future podcasts and future articles as well.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we really think that organizations that can execute against all five of these uh steps are gonna have um a competitive advantage over other organizations.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not optional anymore to not have an answer to these to these types of questions that we're talking about.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Great stuff.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Paul.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Ryan.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Way Too Busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neon, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayToo Busy at Billion Minds.com.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.