Eat Sleep Work Repeat - better workplace culture

Today's conversation is with Professor Benjamin Laker, someone I've long admired for his cutting edge work on the evolution of culture. His article on Meeting Free Days is probably the piece of research I've shared the most in the last 5 years.

Laker is Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, which is part of the University of Reading. As well as writing multiple bestselling books on work like Too Proud to Lead and Job Cr...

Daniel Coyle returns to reflect on what has changed since we last spoke. He's moved attention to an examination of what contributes to us getting a fulfilling experience from work - and life.

We talk attention, community and the way that great teams demonstrate 'group flow'. We also delve into some research by Nick Epley that I've covered on the newsletter, that suggests we're terrible at predicting what will make us happy.

If yo...

I'm joined by Daniel Zhao, chief economist of Glassdoor, who talks me through their new rankings of the best places to work in 2026.

It's an intriguing list, is a car wash really better than some of the most famous tech brands in the world?

The ranking allows us to explore what we want in a job: culture, connection, progression and autonomy.

Bad culture is 7 times more powerful driving quitting than salary: hear Charlie an...

Kevin Green is the Chief People Officer for First Group.

He's set about reinventing the culture of the organisation from the ground up.

I heard Kevin speak at an event last year was completely bowled over by the way he talked about culture and the way he was trying to build it. I think you'll love this discussion. There's a full transcript on the website.

Also mentioned: Waitrose culture episode with Lord Mark Price

Sig...

Dr Karen Bridbord is the author of a new book, The Relationship-Driven Leader that invites us to bring a psychologist's lens to our job and the relationships with those around us.

Her perspective is to use psychology to understand the person in front of you to interpret the world through their eyes. If you’ve got a controlling boss or someone who behaves in a way that impacts your life she helps you unpick what’s going in their head...

Gen Z have been shaped by recessions, the pandemic, geopolitical instability, not to mention financial insecurity and world changing technology.

That's the finding of the Edelman Gen Z Lab as told to me by the leader of the project Jackie Cooper. Most powerfully she explains that Gen Z's have a 'visceral need for safety' - that's financial, social, cultural and even physical.

They respond to fear by asking questions and wanti...

Most company training is a waste of time that turns firms into bureaucratic sludge holes. That’s roughly the conclusion of today’s episode which is a conversation with Andre Spicer and Mats Alvesson

They have a new book out The Art of Less. Andre has been a guest a few times before - way back in 2018. This podcast is old. In 2018 this podcast was ahead of Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO at the top of the podcast charts. (Andre ...

Jeremy Holt is a psychologist and leadership coach who has spent more than 20 years helping teams get better. Read his research about better team results.

This episode is the third part of a series about the power of identity in teams. Listen to the other Eat Sleep Work Repeat episodes about identity.

Jeremy posting about identity

Watch the Lebron documentary More Than a Game

Jeremy's book For the Love of the Game

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 i...

“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 adul...

Simon Gilbody talks loneliness at work

• The Loneliness of the American Worker - Wall Street Journal
• Make Work Better on loneliness
• More on solving loneliness
• Loneliness in teams
• Derek Thompson on elective isolation

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 l...

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 ...

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 age...

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...

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 ...

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 consisten...

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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.

I chatted to Charlie Eccleshare from The Athletic about the cultural reinvention that the Australian manager that enacted.

Reader, the Big Ange story didn't end well as a result a lot of fans of other ...

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 t...

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 chal...