November 26, 2024 • 20 mins
In this episode of the Get Off The Treadmill podcast, Chuck Blakeman sits down with Josh Allan Dykstra, a leading expert on human energy and the future of work. Josh, a dynamic keynote speaker and author, reveals why human energy—not employee engagement—is the secret to skyrocketing productivity, creativity, and retention in today’s workplace.
While most companies focus on engagement to boost performance, Josh argues that it’s actually human energy that drives success. When organizations learn to harness and optimize energy levels, they can transform their teams, foster innovation, and create a culture that thrives.
Key Takeaways from the Episode:
- Energy Fuels Success: It’s not just about feeling engaged—employees must be energized by their work. Energy drives motivation, performance, and creativity, which leads to measurable success.
- Engagement vs. Energy: Engagement focuses on how connected employees are to their tasks. However, it’s human energy—the internal drive—that keeps employees productive and fulfilled. Josh explains why energy should be the new focus for organizations.
- Track and Optimize Energy: Discover how a simple ""energy journal"" can help employees and leaders track their daily energy highs and lows. Understanding energy patterns helps optimize work for sustainable productivity.
- Hiring for Energy: Hiring the right people isn't just about skills—it's about matching individuals' energy levels with the tasks they’ll be performing. This alignment reduces burnout and increases job satisfaction.
- The Future of Work: The future of work is shifting towards energy-driven workplaces. Josh shares how companies that prioritize human energy over traditional metrics will lead the way in building innovative, successful, and engaged teams.
Josh’s insights will challenge the way you think about productivity, leadership, and workplace culture. He provides actionable strategies to help organizations stop draining their employees and start fueling them for success.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Today I'm talking with Josh Allan Dykstra.
He is a future of work keynote speaker
and the world's foremost practitioner on human energy.
He has spent the last two decades building
five companies and working with some of the
most iconic brands on earth.
(00:46):
His clients have a combined employee count of
over a million people.
Josh is also an author, TEDx speaker, and
founder and CEO of the Work Revolution, where
they fight for the future by fixing work.
Welcome Josh.
It's great to have you on today.
Thank you so much, Chuck.
So glad to be here.
Yeah, this is fun having a friend on
that I've watched your journey and it's been
(01:07):
fun to see what's transpiring.
Today we're going to talk about human energy.
We're just going to go right after it.
And the idea may be surrounding the idea
that energizing people instead of sucking the life
out of them.
So let's just start with human energy, Josh.
What do you mean?
Because we could come up, I could come
up with my own.
What do you mean when you say human
energy?
(01:27):
Yeah, I probably want to back up even
further and just talk about the word energy.
Because I think the word energy is a
funny word because people hear it very differently.
Depending on the frame you bring into the
situation, you might be thinking about oil or
coal or fossil fuels, or you might be
thinking about crystals and energy healers, or you
might be thinking about wind power, renewables.
(01:50):
There's so many things that we could think
when we hear the word energy.
And so what I think is really important
is to ground this in the idea of
human energy, which is the thing that makes
everything happen.
Nothing happens.
So when I talk about this, what I
mean is that nothing happens in your organization
if a human didn't have the energy to
(02:11):
start it or to keep it going.
Nothing happens.
It's the thing that moves everything in your
organization.
And yet we hardly tend to human energy
at all.
We hardly think about it.
We had a little blip after the pandemic
where it was kind of like, oh, maybe
we should care about energy.
And we kind of started caring about it
(02:31):
in the frame of burnout.
It's like, oh my goodness, we don't have
this anymore.
Maybe we should pay attention to it.
But as often as possible, organizations tend to
ignore, largely ignore this thing that actually makes
them move.
Why is that?
Why do they do that?
It's mystifying?
It really is.
(02:51):
It really is.
And it's somehow, I think we have a
hard time, we as kind of a species,
we have a hard time with invisible things
in general, systems and just these things that
we can't see.
Principles and vision.
Totally.
Ideas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We really like tangible, concrete, visible things.
(03:13):
And so we always kind of drift towards
those, I think, in our organizations and energy
is like that.
It's like, man, we feel it when we
don't have it.
But otherwise we kind of pretend like it
isn't there or it doesn't matter.
And of course it's not true, but it's
easy to ignore because it's invisible.
So I think people have tried to do
something with this and they've come up with
(03:33):
this idea in the last 15 or 20
years of creating engagement.
And the idea seems to be that Gallup
every month does a survey that like 28
to 32% of people every month are
engaged and the other 70% are phoning
it in.
Is that a form of lack of energy?
(03:55):
I think it's getting in the right direction.
Yeah.
Right.
So the way Gallup measures engagement, they cover
a whole lot of things.
So they wouldn't hate me if I reduced
their survey to just this one topic, but
it is getting in that direction, right?
Because it really is trying to measure, do
I feel kind of like meaningfully connected to
the work that I'm doing?
(04:16):
And do I have the tools that I
need to do that, right?
Like all of that is in the right
direction.
It's just kind of like not explicitly clear
enough for my liking, because I've found that
working in organizations, putting this lens of energy
on it is just really helpful.
It's really like you can get really granular
and really specific.
Does this activity energize you or does it
(04:37):
drain you?
Or is it somewhere in the middle?
Or you can get really specific and it
connects to flow states, which is also really
helpful because that's when we tap into productivity,
but it's so much more productive when they're
in flow.
And if we can do more flow at
work, that's good for everybody.
Yeah.
I think we've landed on this, floundered around
for a hundred years and landed on this
idea of let's get people more engaged, frankly,
(04:58):
because it does more for the organization maybe
than it even does for the individual, because
I can be a hundred percent engaged and
completely de-energized by everything I'm doing.
And that's not going to last very long.
So yeah, you might scare me or fear
me or join me into doing something for
a while that I really don't, I'm not
energized by.
And so we're not getting to the root
(05:20):
cause with something like engagement.
We got millions and tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars being spent on engagement.
I think it's kind of a ruse that
says, you know, I want you to make
me more money and you just, you go
ahead and burn out.
That's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It really, yeah.
There's something about the engagement topic that, yeah,
(05:42):
A, it just, it hasn't changed much to
your point.
Like over the last, whatever, two or three
decades, right.
It's always just been the same and it's
just kind of, oh my goodness, like we
need to come up with some new ideas
here to actually move the needle on this,
this darn thing.
Yeah.
Then, then it really also needs to get
more specific, right.
It really needs to get into, okay.
So how do you help?
(06:03):
How do you being specific?
What are some ways in which we could
tell that I'm energized by something?
Yeah.
So you're always, you've got this really great
energy detector called your body, right?
And it knows, and it probably has a
lot more practice noticing, especially at work, the
things that suck the life out of you.
Right?
So it's, it's pretty good at that, right?
(06:24):
I can say, oh my goodness, that thing.
Oh, I hate doing that.
Oh, I hate that meeting.
I hate working with that person.
Right?
We can identify those things.
We've got more practice with that.
What we don't have very much practice in
is, is the opposite, right?
What actually brings us energy?
And so, but your, your body does that
too.
Once you just have to like, remember how
to pay attention to what energizes you, but
(06:46):
you can just do this, keep a, keep
a little like energy journal, right?
So just like we say, you know, make
a piece of paper, draw a line down
the middle, vertically put, you know, energized and
drained, you know, on, on each column and
then just start keeping track, right?
It's like, oh man, when I did that
thing, that really felt draining.
Well, when I did that thing, I really
liked it.
I think I could do that all day
and just start paying attention.
(07:09):
And it's not that complicated, but it, it's
not something we really do.
It's not something we actively do.
It isn't.
And I think the older you are, the
harder that concept is because it's not just
paying attention.
I think in many cases it's giving yourself
permission to ask yourself, how do I feel
about this?
Do I feel energized?
Do I not feel like, you know, we're
(07:30):
not supposed to do that.
My mom told me, you don't got to
work to, you know, have fun.
You got to work to be energized.
You got to work to make money.
You can come home and get re-energized.
Work saps the life out of you and
you come home to get that fixed.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that, yeah, so we're fighting against
kind of a number of really entrenched kind
of belief systems here like that, right?
(07:51):
It's like, yeah, work is called work for
a reason, right?
And work is a four letter word, right?
On and off.
We've got all of these things that kind
of, these stories, cultural stories that are deeply
embedded that try to tell us, if work
doesn't hurt you a little bit, it's probably
not work, right?
And it's just like, why?
Who says, right?
Like why you spend so much of your
life at work, probably more time awake than
(08:12):
doing anything else, right?
Who says it should suck so bad?
Like, maybe it should actually energize you.
And the cool thing about this too, is
that this works for the organization as well,
because everything works better when you optimize for
human energy.
So customers are treated better, right?
When my tank is full, right?
I approach solutions with more ideas.
I come to my colleagues with less tension,
(08:35):
right?
Like everything works better when my tank is
full of energy.
So it's better for the company too.
So yeah, there's really no downside.
So we're just going to scratch the surface
and annoy everybody on this today, because we
don't do long podcasts.
But give us one thing, where could I
start to help measure, to help get people
(08:57):
and to figure some of this out?
What's one place I could start?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The free thing is probably this energy journal
idea.
Like you can start that today, right?
You can start it now.
Just start keeping track of what energizes you,
what doesn't.
And then after that, like do that for
a week, week or two, and then go
(09:19):
back and look for patterns.
That's what you're trying to do is some
pattern recognition.
And you're trying to kind of connect some
dots to say, oh, I've got a theme
here, right?
When I'm doing strategic things, I feel good.
When I get to do detail-y things
or when I get to do people-related
things.
Get it as granular as you possibly can
in certain theme areas, because there's going to
(09:40):
be a common thread that you can tie
and say, okay, when I tend to do
these kinds of activities, I feel good.
And when I tend to do these other
ones, man, I feel dull or distracted or
I want to procrastinate, right?
There's certain activities that put us in that
physical space.
So just start to connect the dots and
pay attention.
If people really want to go deeper, and
(10:01):
you know this, Chuck, we've got an assessment
that we love that helps people do that.
So they could go down that path and
get in touch with me.
I can tell you more about it.
But you can do a lot of this.
Can you give us a URL or some
way, some identifier to push people in that
direction?
Because I think that would be a great
second step for them is just to look
at that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the best way to do that,
(10:23):
probably just head to my website and ping
me, probably at JoshAllan.com.
Okay.
And it's two A's, A-L-L-A
-N, Josh Allan Dykstra, D-Y-K-S
-T-R-A.
Yeah, but you can just go to JoshAllan
.com.
Now you don't have to worry about spelling
Dykstra.
Got it.
Good.
(10:44):
Well, so how do I marry this up,
Josh, with the idea of a job description?
Hey, I got this job I need to
do.
And some of it energizes me and some
of it doesn't.
Or I don't know.
How do I as a leader or how
do I as a stakeholder, someone who's a
member of an organization, how do I put
these things together?
(11:05):
Because that's a rub, I would guess.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it can be.
I think it's also an opportunity for leaders
and team members to renegotiate what do jobs
look like?
So again, everything works better when we optimize
for human energy.
So if leaders can let go a little
bit of their control freakishness around this job
(11:27):
has to be done in this way by
this person, if we can let go of
some of that and just say, hey, who's
energized by working on this part?
And let people self-select.
This is very congruent with self-managing distributed
decision making.
Because it's very autonomous.
Who's energized by this?
(11:48):
Why don't you vote with your feet and
walk in and do it?
And then other people are going to be
energized by other things.
And what you can do then is start
to use this also as a hiring philosophy,
because you might have a spot in your
team where you realize, oh, actually, we need
to get this thing done, but nobody here
is energized by that.
Go recruit for it.
That becomes part of your posting.
And you say, hey, we're looking for somebody
(12:09):
who loves doing this thing because we don't
have that person on our team yet.
But you deliberately start to kind of staff
around the topic of who's energized by doing
what as much as you possibly can, right?
Yeah.
And if you're a small business, it might
take a while.
None of this is perfect.
It's just better.
We're not shooting for perfect because there's all
kinds of arguments against doing something I'm hearing
(12:33):
some of our audience say, chaos, anarchy, chaos,
anarchy.
And I've never experienced that in the organizations
where I've seen this happen.
It's pretty simple.
You don't lose anything.
You write down everything that needs to get
done.
And then people put their names beside those
things.
And yes, there will probably be some things
(12:53):
that nobody's name gets put beside.
I still have things in my life that
I don't like doing.
And you know what?
There's nobody else to do them.
And I'm okay with it because the majority
of what I'm doing is stuff that energizes
me.
So I can do a few things to
serve the organization.
Even that energizes me to do things I
don't like is actually energizing in a sense
(13:16):
that I do these two or three things
because it serves the organization and that energizes
me to serve the organization.
So it's not chaos.
It's not anarchy.
It's just a completely different way of doing
this that will actually put people in the
highest and best use of their time, talent,
and energies.
And you're right.
We could go on for probably three hours
on the research that shows what you've just
(13:38):
said that when you are kind to people
and treat them like adults and get them
into what is the highest and best use
of their time and energy, those companies all
live at the top of their industries, every
single one of them.
And people stay longer, productivity.
I mean, everything, all measures of good company
come from getting people into what is their
best use of their time and talents.
(13:58):
Still do some things that work for me
that I wouldn't do if it wasn't up
to me.
But even that in a way energizes me
because I'm serving the organization by doing some
things that I don't like doing.
Yeah.
So there's other strategies here where you can
do just like what you just did, which
(14:19):
is to reframe certain activities through the lens
of something that brings you energy.
So there's all sorts of kind of tricks
and things you can do here to approach
your work in a more energizing way.
And that is the goal, to get as
many just intrinsically motivating things as possible, like
do those things as much as you can.
And then, yeah, if there's some crap that
(14:41):
you got to do, try to get rid
of it.
Try to get somebody in who loves doing
it because that's always the best option.
But yeah, if you can't, there's probably ways
you can look at it differently.
And that helps too.
Yeah.
And this is called the Get Off the
Treadmill podcast.
It doesn't mean that it's always for the
(15:02):
business owner or anybody else.
This is getting everybody off the treadmill.
Imagine if we had an organization where there
was 100% of the people were doing
things that were energized by.
I have seen these.
I don't have to imagine them.
I've seen organizations with 100, 200, 300, 1
,000 plus people.
And it's 100% engagement.
(15:23):
There's no 28 to 32% every month.
And it's because they're energized.
Imagine what that would be like and what
that does for your organization to have somebody
like that.
That's everybody off the treadmill.
That's people running to work, climbing the walls
to get in.
There's a washing machine factory in Brazil where
they've never had to put out an ad
(15:45):
for anybody because the people are climbing the
walls to get in because they do this
stuff in a washing machine factory.
They worry about the human energy.
And they ask people, the first question they
ask when they're interviewing somebody is, when would
you like to come to work?
And if they want to come to work
in the evenings or in the morning, they
figure out there's a team that works like
that.
And they work with that team.
So it's bizarre in a sense.
(16:07):
It's not new at all.
And yet it's incredibly narrow sector of businesses
that are doing this yet.
I don't know, 1%, 2%.
But I do believe it is the future
of work.
Yeah, I do too.
Yeah, it's the reason everything happens, right?
Because a human has the energy to start
it or keep it going.
And so the more you can recognize that
and pay attention to it and then foster
(16:28):
it.
Put as many things around your people as
possible that are life giving.
And so you can look at all your...
So this is another thing you could do
is look at all your systems.
So look at the way you do performance
management if you're doing that, the way you're
doing expense reports, the way you're communicating, what
platforms are you using?
Are those things actually energizing for people?
Or do people just like tolerate slash hate
them, right?
(16:49):
Like a lot of these systems are terrible.
They're life sucking, right?
Some of these HRIS systems out there, right?
Like some of these things are just like
Franken software garbage.
Like you're torturing people by making them use
these things, right?
Like don't do that.
Like sucking the life out of people.
That's so much friction.
You need more flow.
Yeah, and why don't you ask them how
they like this software?
(17:09):
Well, I want to point something out.
We're going to have to close here in
a minute, but I want to point something
out.
You've used as a very simple, powerful theme
that I'm just recognizing.
And that is this.
It seems like what you've been saying and
what I've been hearing in my head for
the last 50 years is that most of
work is built on the negative.
What's the least amount of work I can
do?
(17:29):
What can I hate the least?
How do I get around?
And running from things.
And you have people running toward things.
And it's so much more powerful when we
try and run away from something, it sucks
us back in.
But running toward something we love instead of
running away from something we hate.
I mean, that just feels right as a
(17:49):
human being.
It feels good and right inside.
And that's what I hear you saying you're
doing with human energy is let's find out
where the things are that people will run
toward and let's get them to run them.
Totally.
Yeah, that's really well said, Chuck.
That's why I call my company The Work
Revolution.
Because revolution in its literal sense means to
turn it around completely.
(18:10):
Like the Earth does a full revolution around
us.
It's a complete turnaround.
And so exactly what you're saying, it's a
turnaround.
We flip this around.
Instead of work being this thing that extracts
energy from people, we turn it into something
that gives energy to people and everything works
better.
Yeah.
Well, Josh, you do a lot of public
speaking and have worked with a lot of
(18:31):
big organizations and smaller ones.
And I want to give people an opportunity
to find you.
JoshAllan.com.
Is that the way to go?
That's perfect.
Yeah, LinkedIn.
Connect me there.
I love to connect with people.
So that'd be great.
Okay.
Well, I strongly encourage people to do this.
(18:52):
This is the future of work.
And I've said this for years.
I said in my TED Talk that companies
that do this are going to thrive.
And the companies that don't do what you're
saying will be left behind.
And we might as well jump on board
now because all the data is on your
side.
It's not like we have to wait around
to see if this works.
We just have to look at the data
and say, why am I still doing something
(19:13):
that was invented for factories?
So let's get a hold of JoshAllan at
JoshAllan.com and let's revolutionize the way we
work.
Thank you, Chuck.
Thank you for all the work you do.
Thank you, my friend.
It's great to have you on.
Likewise.
Appreciate it.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
(19:34):
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W at cranksetgroup.com.
(19:57):
Until next time, have a great week.
Bye.
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Today I'm talking with Josh Allan Dykstra.
He is a future of work keynote speaker
and the world's foremost practitioner on human energy.
He has spent the last two decades building
five companies and working with some of the
most iconic brands on earth.
(00:46):
His clients have a combined employee count of
over a million people.
Josh is also an author, TEDx speaker, and
founder and CEO of the Work Revolution, where
they fight for the future by fixing work.
Welcome Josh.
It's great to have you on today.
Thank you so much, Chuck.
So glad to be here.
Yeah, this is fun having a friend on
that I've watched your journey and it's been
(01:07):
fun to see what's transpiring.
Today we're going to talk about human energy.
We're just going to go right after it.
And the idea may be surrounding the idea
that energizing people instead of sucking the life
out of them.
So let's just start with human energy, Josh.
What do you mean?
Because we could come up, I could come
up with my own.
What do you mean when you say human
energy?
(01:27):
Yeah, I probably want to back up even
further and just talk about the word energy.
Because I think the word energy is a
funny word because people hear it very differently.
Depending on the frame you bring into the
situation, you might be thinking about oil or
coal or fossil fuels, or you might be
thinking about crystals and energy healers, or you
might be thinking about wind power, renewables.
(01:50):
There's so many things that we could think
when we hear the word energy.
And so what I think is really important
is to ground this in the idea of
human energy, which is the thing that makes
everything happen.
Nothing happens.
So when I talk about this, what I
mean is that nothing happens in your organization
if a human didn't have the energy to
(02:11):
start it or to keep it going.
Nothing happens.
It's the thing that moves everything in your
organization.
And yet we hardly tend to human energy
at all.
We hardly think about it.
We had a little blip after the pandemic
where it was kind of like, oh, maybe
we should care about energy.
And we kind of started caring about it
(02:31):
in the frame of burnout.
It's like, oh my goodness, we don't have
this anymore.
Maybe we should pay attention to it.
But as often as possible, organizations tend to
ignore, largely ignore this thing that actually makes
them move.
Why is that?
Why do they do that?
It's mystifying?
It really is.
(02:51):
It really is.
And it's somehow, I think we have a
hard time, we as kind of a species,
we have a hard time with invisible things
in general, systems and just these things that
we can't see.
Principles and vision.
Totally.
Ideas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We really like tangible, concrete, visible things.
(03:13):
And so we always kind of drift towards
those, I think, in our organizations and energy
is like that.
It's like, man, we feel it when we
don't have it.
But otherwise we kind of pretend like it
isn't there or it doesn't matter.
And of course it's not true, but it's
easy to ignore because it's invisible.
So I think people have tried to do
something with this and they've come up with
(03:33):
this idea in the last 15 or 20
years of creating engagement.
And the idea seems to be that Gallup
every month does a survey that like 28
to 32% of people every month are
engaged and the other 70% are phoning
it in.
Is that a form of lack of energy?
(03:55):
I think it's getting in the right direction.
Yeah.
Right.
So the way Gallup measures engagement, they cover
a whole lot of things.
So they wouldn't hate me if I reduced
their survey to just this one topic, but
it is getting in that direction, right?
Because it really is trying to measure, do
I feel kind of like meaningfully connected to
the work that I'm doing?
(04:16):
And do I have the tools that I
need to do that, right?
Like all of that is in the right
direction.
It's just kind of like not explicitly clear
enough for my liking, because I've found that
working in organizations, putting this lens of energy
on it is just really helpful.
It's really like you can get really granular
and really specific.
Does this activity energize you or does it
(04:37):
drain you?
Or is it somewhere in the middle?
Or you can get really specific and it
connects to flow states, which is also really
helpful because that's when we tap into productivity,
but it's so much more productive when they're
in flow.
And if we can do more flow at
work, that's good for everybody.
Yeah.
I think we've landed on this, floundered around
for a hundred years and landed on this
idea of let's get people more engaged, frankly,
(04:58):
because it does more for the organization maybe
than it even does for the individual, because
I can be a hundred percent engaged and
completely de-energized by everything I'm doing.
And that's not going to last very long.
So yeah, you might scare me or fear
me or join me into doing something for
a while that I really don't, I'm not
energized by.
And so we're not getting to the root
(05:20):
cause with something like engagement.
We got millions and tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars being spent on engagement.
I think it's kind of a ruse that
says, you know, I want you to make
me more money and you just, you go
ahead and burn out.
That's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It really, yeah.
There's something about the engagement topic that, yeah,
(05:42):
A, it just, it hasn't changed much to
your point.
Like over the last, whatever, two or three
decades, right.
It's always just been the same and it's
just kind of, oh my goodness, like we
need to come up with some new ideas
here to actually move the needle on this,
this darn thing.
Yeah.
Then, then it really also needs to get
more specific, right.
It really needs to get into, okay.
So how do you help?
(06:03):
How do you being specific?
What are some ways in which we could
tell that I'm energized by something?
Yeah.
So you're always, you've got this really great
energy detector called your body, right?
And it knows, and it probably has a
lot more practice noticing, especially at work, the
things that suck the life out of you.
Right?
So it's, it's pretty good at that, right?
(06:24):
I can say, oh my goodness, that thing.
Oh, I hate doing that.
Oh, I hate that meeting.
I hate working with that person.
Right?
We can identify those things.
We've got more practice with that.
What we don't have very much practice in
is, is the opposite, right?
What actually brings us energy?
And so, but your, your body does that
too.
Once you just have to like, remember how
to pay attention to what energizes you, but
(06:46):
you can just do this, keep a, keep
a little like energy journal, right?
So just like we say, you know, make
a piece of paper, draw a line down
the middle, vertically put, you know, energized and
drained, you know, on, on each column and
then just start keeping track, right?
It's like, oh man, when I did that
thing, that really felt draining.
Well, when I did that thing, I really
liked it.
I think I could do that all day
and just start paying attention.
(07:09):
And it's not that complicated, but it, it's
not something we really do.
It's not something we actively do.
It isn't.
And I think the older you are, the
harder that concept is because it's not just
paying attention.
I think in many cases it's giving yourself
permission to ask yourself, how do I feel
about this?
Do I feel energized?
Do I not feel like, you know, we're
(07:30):
not supposed to do that.
My mom told me, you don't got to
work to, you know, have fun.
You got to work to be energized.
You got to work to make money.
You can come home and get re-energized.
Work saps the life out of you and
you come home to get that fixed.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that, yeah, so we're fighting against
kind of a number of really entrenched kind
of belief systems here like that, right?
(07:51):
It's like, yeah, work is called work for
a reason, right?
And work is a four letter word, right?
On and off.
We've got all of these things that kind
of, these stories, cultural stories that are deeply
embedded that try to tell us, if work
doesn't hurt you a little bit, it's probably
not work, right?
And it's just like, why?
Who says, right?
Like why you spend so much of your
life at work, probably more time awake than
(08:12):
doing anything else, right?
Who says it should suck so bad?
Like, maybe it should actually energize you.
And the cool thing about this too, is
that this works for the organization as well,
because everything works better when you optimize for
human energy.
So customers are treated better, right?
When my tank is full, right?
I approach solutions with more ideas.
I come to my colleagues with less tension,
(08:35):
right?
Like everything works better when my tank is
full of energy.
So it's better for the company too.
So yeah, there's really no downside.
So we're just going to scratch the surface
and annoy everybody on this today, because we
don't do long podcasts.
But give us one thing, where could I
start to help measure, to help get people
(08:57):
and to figure some of this out?
What's one place I could start?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The free thing is probably this energy journal
idea.
Like you can start that today, right?
You can start it now.
Just start keeping track of what energizes you,
what doesn't.
And then after that, like do that for
a week, week or two, and then go
(09:19):
back and look for patterns.
That's what you're trying to do is some
pattern recognition.
And you're trying to kind of connect some
dots to say, oh, I've got a theme
here, right?
When I'm doing strategic things, I feel good.
When I get to do detail-y things
or when I get to do people-related
things.
Get it as granular as you possibly can
in certain theme areas, because there's going to
(09:40):
be a common thread that you can tie
and say, okay, when I tend to do
these kinds of activities, I feel good.
And when I tend to do these other
ones, man, I feel dull or distracted or
I want to procrastinate, right?
There's certain activities that put us in that
physical space.
So just start to connect the dots and
pay attention.
If people really want to go deeper, and
(10:01):
you know this, Chuck, we've got an assessment
that we love that helps people do that.
So they could go down that path and
get in touch with me.
I can tell you more about it.
But you can do a lot of this.
Can you give us a URL or some
way, some identifier to push people in that
direction?
Because I think that would be a great
second step for them is just to look
at that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the best way to do that,
(10:23):
probably just head to my website and ping
me, probably at JoshAllan.com.
Okay.
And it's two A's, A-L-L-A
-N, Josh Allan Dykstra, D-Y-K-S
-T-R-A.
Yeah, but you can just go to JoshAllan
.com.
Now you don't have to worry about spelling
Dykstra.
Got it.
Good.
(10:44):
Well, so how do I marry this up,
Josh, with the idea of a job description?
Hey, I got this job I need to
do.
And some of it energizes me and some
of it doesn't.
Or I don't know.
How do I as a leader or how
do I as a stakeholder, someone who's a
member of an organization, how do I put
these things together?
(11:05):
Because that's a rub, I would guess.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it can be.
I think it's also an opportunity for leaders
and team members to renegotiate what do jobs
look like?
So again, everything works better when we optimize
for human energy.
So if leaders can let go a little
bit of their control freakishness around this job
(11:27):
has to be done in this way by
this person, if we can let go of
some of that and just say, hey, who's
energized by working on this part?
And let people self-select.
This is very congruent with self-managing distributed
decision making.
Because it's very autonomous.
Who's energized by this?
(11:48):
Why don't you vote with your feet and
walk in and do it?
And then other people are going to be
energized by other things.
And what you can do then is start
to use this also as a hiring philosophy,
because you might have a spot in your
team where you realize, oh, actually, we need
to get this thing done, but nobody here
is energized by that.
Go recruit for it.
That becomes part of your posting.
And you say, hey, we're looking for somebody
(12:09):
who loves doing this thing because we don't
have that person on our team yet.
But you deliberately start to kind of staff
around the topic of who's energized by doing
what as much as you possibly can, right?
Yeah.
And if you're a small business, it might
take a while.
None of this is perfect.
It's just better.
We're not shooting for perfect because there's all
kinds of arguments against doing something I'm hearing
(12:33):
some of our audience say, chaos, anarchy, chaos,
anarchy.
And I've never experienced that in the organizations
where I've seen this happen.
It's pretty simple.
You don't lose anything.
You write down everything that needs to get
done.
And then people put their names beside those
things.
And yes, there will probably be some things
(12:53):
that nobody's name gets put beside.
I still have things in my life that
I don't like doing.
And you know what?
There's nobody else to do them.
And I'm okay with it because the majority
of what I'm doing is stuff that energizes
me.
So I can do a few things to
serve the organization.
Even that energizes me to do things I
don't like is actually energizing in a sense
(13:16):
that I do these two or three things
because it serves the organization and that energizes
me to serve the organization.
So it's not chaos.
It's not anarchy.
It's just a completely different way of doing
this that will actually put people in the
highest and best use of their time, talent,
and energies.
And you're right.
We could go on for probably three hours
on the research that shows what you've just
(13:38):
said that when you are kind to people
and treat them like adults and get them
into what is the highest and best use
of their time and energy, those companies all
live at the top of their industries, every
single one of them.
And people stay longer, productivity.
I mean, everything, all measures of good company
come from getting people into what is their
best use of their time and talents.
(13:58):
Still do some things that work for me
that I wouldn't do if it wasn't up
to me.
But even that in a way energizes me
because I'm serving the organization by doing some
things that I don't like doing.
Yeah.
So there's other strategies here where you can
do just like what you just did, which
(14:19):
is to reframe certain activities through the lens
of something that brings you energy.
So there's all sorts of kind of tricks
and things you can do here to approach
your work in a more energizing way.
And that is the goal, to get as
many just intrinsically motivating things as possible, like
do those things as much as you can.
And then, yeah, if there's some crap that
(14:41):
you got to do, try to get rid
of it.
Try to get somebody in who loves doing
it because that's always the best option.
But yeah, if you can't, there's probably ways
you can look at it differently.
And that helps too.
Yeah.
And this is called the Get Off the
Treadmill podcast.
It doesn't mean that it's always for the
(15:02):
business owner or anybody else.
This is getting everybody off the treadmill.
Imagine if we had an organization where there
was 100% of the people were doing
things that were energized by.
I have seen these.
I don't have to imagine them.
I've seen organizations with 100, 200, 300, 1
,000 plus people.
And it's 100% engagement.
(15:23):
There's no 28 to 32% every month.
And it's because they're energized.
Imagine what that would be like and what
that does for your organization to have somebody
like that.
That's everybody off the treadmill.
That's people running to work, climbing the walls
to get in.
There's a washing machine factory in Brazil where
they've never had to put out an ad
(15:45):
for anybody because the people are climbing the
walls to get in because they do this
stuff in a washing machine factory.
They worry about the human energy.
And they ask people, the first question they
ask when they're interviewing somebody is, when would
you like to come to work?
And if they want to come to work
in the evenings or in the morning, they
figure out there's a team that works like
that.
And they work with that team.
So it's bizarre in a sense.
(16:07):
It's not new at all.
And yet it's incredibly narrow sector of businesses
that are doing this yet.
I don't know, 1%, 2%.
But I do believe it is the future
of work.
Yeah, I do too.
Yeah, it's the reason everything happens, right?
Because a human has the energy to start
it or keep it going.
And so the more you can recognize that
and pay attention to it and then foster
(16:28):
it.
Put as many things around your people as
possible that are life giving.
And so you can look at all your...
So this is another thing you could do
is look at all your systems.
So look at the way you do performance
management if you're doing that, the way you're
doing expense reports, the way you're communicating, what
platforms are you using?
Are those things actually energizing for people?
Or do people just like tolerate slash hate
them, right?
(16:49):
Like a lot of these systems are terrible.
They're life sucking, right?
Some of these HRIS systems out there, right?
Like some of these things are just like
Franken software garbage.
Like you're torturing people by making them use
these things, right?
Like don't do that.
Like sucking the life out of people.
That's so much friction.
You need more flow.
Yeah, and why don't you ask them how
they like this software?
(17:09):
Well, I want to point something out.
We're going to have to close here in
a minute, but I want to point something
out.
You've used as a very simple, powerful theme
that I'm just recognizing.
And that is this.
It seems like what you've been saying and
what I've been hearing in my head for
the last 50 years is that most of
work is built on the negative.
What's the least amount of work I can
do?
(17:29):
What can I hate the least?
How do I get around?
And running from things.
And you have people running toward things.
And it's so much more powerful when we
try and run away from something, it sucks
us back in.
But running toward something we love instead of
running away from something we hate.
I mean, that just feels right as a
(17:49):
human being.
It feels good and right inside.
And that's what I hear you saying you're
doing with human energy is let's find out
where the things are that people will run
toward and let's get them to run them.
Totally.
Yeah, that's really well said, Chuck.
That's why I call my company The Work
Revolution.
Because revolution in its literal sense means to
turn it around completely.
(18:10):
Like the Earth does a full revolution around
us.
It's a complete turnaround.
And so exactly what you're saying, it's a
turnaround.
We flip this around.
Instead of work being this thing that extracts
energy from people, we turn it into something
that gives energy to people and everything works
better.
Yeah.
Well, Josh, you do a lot of public
speaking and have worked with a lot of
(18:31):
big organizations and smaller ones.
And I want to give people an opportunity
to find you.
JoshAllan.com.
Is that the way to go?
That's perfect.
Yeah, LinkedIn.
Connect me there.
I love to connect with people.
So that'd be great.
Okay.
Well, I strongly encourage people to do this.
(18:52):
This is the future of work.
And I've said this for years.
I said in my TED Talk that companies
that do this are going to thrive.
And the companies that don't do what you're
saying will be left behind.
And we might as well jump on board
now because all the data is on your
side.
It's not like we have to wait around
to see if this works.
We just have to look at the data
and say, why am I still doing something
(19:13):
that was invented for factories?
So let's get a hold of JoshAllan at
JoshAllan.com and let's revolutionize the way we
work.
Thank you, Chuck.
Thank you for all the work you do.
Thank you, my friend.
It's great to have you on.
Likewise.
Appreciate it.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
(19:34):
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W at cranksetgroup.com.
(19:57):
Until next time, have a great week.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com