February 25, 2025 • 60 mins
Burnout is at an all-time high. Engagement is at an all-time low. And work? Well, it’s not working for a lot of us.
In this episode, we sit down with Jennifer Moss, workplace culture expert and author of Why Are We Here?, to talk about why so many of us feel unfulfilled at work—and what leaders actually need to do to fix it. We bust the biggest myths about workplace wellbeing, talk about why hope (yes, hope) is a leadership strategy, and dig into why Gen Z is side-eyeing corporate life.
If you’ve ever thought, “Is this really all there is?”—you’re not alone. Let’s rethink work, together.
🔊 Hit play to learn:
✔️ Why toxic productivity is still running rampant
✔️ What companies are getting so wrong about engagement
✔️ How small changes (think: 20 minutes or less) can transform your work culture
🎧 Listen now and let’s make work suck less.
About Jennifer Moss:
Jennifer Moss is an international speaker, award-winning journalist and author, workplace culture strategist, and cofounder of the Work Better Institute, a global workforce policy think tank. She is a nationally syndicated radio columnist and writes for Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Fortune. As a workplace expert, Jennifer is regularly invited by global media outlets to share her research and insights.
With a client roster of over 150 organizations, including 50+ Fortune 500 companies, her inspiring and informative keynote presentations influence sectors from technology to healthcare, where she is trusted with the employees, leaders, and customers of our incredible partners. As a nationally syndicated radio columnist and a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, CNN, TIME, and The Wall Street Journal, her insights are shaping the Future of Work and she received rave reviews for her happiness keynotes and public speaking on burnout in the workplace.
#WorkCulture #Burnout #FutureOfWork #EmployeeEngagement #CorporateLife #JenniferMoss #WhyAreWeHere #WorkLifeBalance #ToxicProductivity #WorkSucksButItDoesntHaveTo
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, finish this sentence.
Work should feel more likeblank and less like blank.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
More like fuel for you know your sense of
accomplishment, Less like agrind Damn right.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Love it, Love it hey, welcome to your work, friend.
I'm francesca ranieri and I'mmel plett.
(00:35):
Mel, what's going?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
on.
You know, spring is springingand it's sprung.
Almost.
Last week was the arctic, thecold here, but this week it is
sunshine almost until 6 30 so,and I hear the birds chirping.
I will take it.
How about?
What's going on with you?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
say what you will about portland in the winter.
We've had a very sunny winterfor portland, but what most
people might not know about portis in the winter the moss turns
like an electric green.
It's like almost fluorescent.
So it's just a very cool timeto be here.
I love it.
Yeah, pretty yeah.
Yeah, I got to enjoy the nature.
You know, got to enjoy thenature you do.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I think I'm one of those sad sufferers the seasonal
affective disorder.
I have one of those lamps.
Have you seen those lamps thathelp you slowly wake up with the
sunshine?
I use that.
I need the atmosphere to feelsunshine included.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Totally get it.
Completely get it, completelyget it.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, we met with Jennifer Moss.
Jennifer is a workplace expert,harvard Business Review
columnist, author of UnlockingHappiness at Work, author of the
Burnout Epidemic and now hernew book, why Are we here?
And it's all about creatingworkplace cultures where
(01:58):
everyone wants to work and wejust had such a fantastic
conversation with her, Francesca.
What did you think about thisconversation?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, I was stoked to talk to Jennifer because she is
, to me, the leading person tolook at on burnout.
Any of the work that Jenniferdoes it is absolutely locked and
loaded with the latest researchon things.
To have her answer the questionaround how do you create a
culture that people actuallywant to show up for was really
interesting.
The book is fascinating.
(02:27):
She is someone that you knowhow you meet people like.
They're so accomplished andthey're so freaking good at what
they do, and then they're justa very cool person on top of
that.
Jennifer Moss.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, 100%.
She was amazing.
I couldn't agree with you more.
You and I talk about this allthe time COVID and then our own
life experiences and things thathappen outside of work have
really reprioritized what ismeaningful for us and where our
priorities stand, our valuesgoing forward, and I think so
(03:00):
many people are going throughkind of that level setting and
gut check for themselves.
What I really loved aboutJennifer's book and I do want to
read a quote that she startedwith that made me really think
about what most people are goingthrough.
She mentions that people aren'tless ambitious or lazy, we're
just feeling uninspired, andthat really stood out to me and
I was like, yes, 100%.
(03:22):
She's weaving together all ofthese really big concepts about
work and providing tangiblethings that you can do today for
yourself, for your team, tomake workplaces that are
inspiring.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's practical, tangible, and most of the things
that she talks about in thebook and with us are things you
can do in 20 minutes or less,sold in 20 minutes or less, 20
minutes or less, 20 minutes orless, 20 minutes or less.
Like, come on, let's go, let'sgo, let's do this.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah Well, friends with that, here's Jennifer Moss.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Jen, I'm going to jump right in here.
What is the biggest myth aboutworkplace idea?
That you can't have one withoutthe other.
If you invest in well-being andyou invest in employee
happiness that somehow that'sjust like a nice to have and
you're a human-centered leaderand I think it's an ego thing
like I'm just doing this for youbecause it's so important that
people are happy and I'm a herofor that and instead it's really
if you're a capitalist, if youwant to be competitive you know
(04:48):
I'm a hero for that and insteadit's really if you're a
capitalist, if you want to becompetitive, if you want to have
a really you know, future readyorganization you invest in
well-being.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I love to hear you say that, because I think back
to the days where, whenwork-life balance was the thing
and people were like who needsthat?
Like it's a badge of honor tojust drive yourself into the
ground, but it's bad forbusiness, right?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It is bad for business and I wrote this
article for Harvard BusinessReview that I think it went
viral because people felt reallyconnected to this idea of toxic
productivity and the title waslet's End Toxic Productivity.
There is this heroic attitudetowards people that don't sleep
and they don't eat and theydon't even take time to go pee,
they just work all the time.
(05:31):
It's like they're the highperforming people and that's
just because they feel likethat's what they have to do to
be able to be promoted.
It's not anyone's real desire,but it's become something we
celebrate and we need to getbetter at.
Looking at rest is not a fourletter word that.
It is actually good for all ofus and it makes us more
productive and leads to lots ofgood business outcomes.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Listen, I am all for bringing back the afternoon nap.
Anyone a fan from kindergarten?
I feel like that was a goodrefresher, so let's build that
in.
You write that work isfundamentally broken.
How did we get here?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
This is a long time coming.
You know, the office is 550years old.
We have sort of behaved in thesame way, around that same
framework.
I mean we went from seven daysa week to six to five, so now
we're in the five zone, whichhas been the last hundred years.
But you know, nothing's reallychanged about work and going
(06:32):
into the office and it beingvery transactional.
But I say, since the advent ofthe car phone, where we were
able to move our work into thenew office which was our car,
that changed work from atransactional relationship to a
social contract.
You're asking us to bring workinto our home, into our personal
life.
You know that really breaks theexpectation, and so we've had
(06:57):
this unwinding of what ourexpectation of work has been and
also the demands on us to beworking all the time with all
these blurred lines.
And there was a point in thepandemic which crises do?
They exacerbate all thoseexisting problems that were
there, that were boiling andexploded them, and so in the
(07:18):
last five years it's like wewent from breaking to broken and
now we have to figure out a newframework for work.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well, throughout the book, you really explored why so
many of us are feelingunfulfilled at work.
Do you think this is a modernproblem, or is this something
we've always struggled with?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
When you look at Gallup's engagement data, it
sort of stayed the same.
We are at the worst level ofactive disengagement levels that
we've seen in a decade, so it'sextraordinarily bad now.
As far as how many people areactually happy at work, it
always really has stayed in that.
You know, globally around 13,15 percent and in the it's
(08:04):
30-ish Canada same thing, but sothere's really a huge swath of
the workforce that hasn't reallybeen happy at work.
But what I believe is that wehad a different expectation of
it before and we knew part of itwas going to be a grind and
there was generations that feltlike, okay, that's just part of
(08:24):
work is that it's not going toalways be enjoyable, and I'm
okay with that.
I have different expectationsfrom a different identity and
your identity about what you didwas more important than, say,
pay or work-life balance or someof those other things.
So our frame of reference inthe last five years has really
changed, and so things likeflexibility used to be a perk,
(08:45):
now it's a right.
We look at being able to not besick at work.
You know, like expecting not tobe burned out.
That has definitely become moreof an expectation, and yet
we're seeing higher levels ofburnout than we ever have, even
since peak pandemic.
And you know, we're asking moreof work and work is asking more
(09:06):
of us, and so I think we'rebecoming more disconnected.
Each group is being moredisconnected from the other,
like this data point that I hadin the book on the purpose gap.
You see, 85% of executivesreally do see and they feel
their purpose.
They say they live theirpurpose every day, whereas only
(09:26):
15% of frontline managers andemployees feel their purpose
every day.
We've lost the expectation ofwork and we have a new frame of
reference.
And also, when you're trustedwith something like everyone was
allowed to work remotely.
We did really well with that.
There was investments inwell-being, which was really
great.
There was investments in DEI,which felt really good.
(09:49):
Employees felt like, okay,here's the moment where we're
going to turn the corner andthere's going to be respect and
there's going to be anunderstanding of our needs,
there's going to be empathy andcompassion.
And then, five years later, andall of those things are being
clawed back, it feels like.
And then, five years later, andall of those things are being
(10:09):
clawed back, it feels like, oh,now I don't feel as much hope.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And so I think that's been catastrophic to levels of
engagement and happiness at work.
Why are we here?
It's such a well-researchedbook, it covers a ton of ground
and I'm wondering if you cantalk about the three key areas
leaders really need to approachdifferently.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Key areas leaders really need to approach
differently.
How I ended up really thinkingabout this book is that I really
do think it's a stacking kindof on, based on the first part,
which are foundations, and thenit's addressing the novel
challenges, because it's a wholenew framework.
We're in the multiverse of work.
We've skipped, you know,timeline.
We're not even the future ofwork, so that's sort of in this
business challenges that we haveto face.
(11:08):
And then the third part is yougreat data point a few days ago,
which was amazing, that showedthat the entire workforce is
(11:28):
pretty much feeling the same way, that leaders that have hope
are what they need right now.
But it's really hope, purposeand community.
So feeling a sense of matteringand feeling like you have
friends.
You know that work isn't justlike going to school without our
gym or recess.
There's actually like kibitzing, like you talk about, and fun
and joy.
And then there's novelchallenges that we need to deal
(11:51):
with.
I talk about, from a sense ofcompassion, freedom and openness
.
And compassion is really how doI take my empathy into, and
that act of listening into,action with AI, fear of becoming
obsolete, this sense of I hearyou but I'm not doing anything
about it, and this is why weneed compassion, you know.
Then we have freedom.
(12:11):
The idea of flexibility is sofocused on where, but how can we
maybe think about it for the60% of the non-remote enabled
workforce, why and with whom,and what we do and when we do it
?
There's lots of ways that wecan create flexibility for that
group, and just freedom is sucha fundamental part of who we are
(12:32):
, and when that strips away, wewill resist it to our death.
I mean, it is baked into us,and so the way that people are
tackling these return to officemandates are just terrible.
And then you know openness isgenerational divides.
We need to be listening to eachjust terrible.
And then you know openness isgenerational divides.
We need to be listening to eachother more and belonging and
recognition is really, how canwe have a shared vision if we
can't pull people together?
(12:52):
We're going to have just asiloed vision and that, no, we
know that doesn't work.
So it's about pulling peopletogether in a sense of belonging
for all of us to work bettertogether.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I think each of those stacks is so important, think
each of those stacks is soimportant and each of those
layers is so important.
And we're not going to gothrough all the stacks on this
episode, but we do want todouble click into a few of them
that just seem so critical andso anchoring.
And I want to talk about hopefirst because, I will be honest,
I read the Gallup research lastweek, read your book as well,
(13:23):
and I was thinking.
The first time I read I waslike we've grown up
professionally saying hope isnot a strategy in the book.
And now Gallup also validatesit.
It's actually scientificallyproven to be a strategy and you
can operationalize hope.
I'm curious about hope.
When we are wondering why weare here, hope is the answer.
Why is that?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And it's amazing because I spent some time and
you would have read the bookwhere I talked to senior leaders
in the military that say hopeis their only strategy, and they
say you know, think about it.
You're sending people out on amission that could risk their
lives and if they don't feelhopeful, they are not going to
even sign up for that.
(14:04):
Sign up for that or they're notgoing to be able to achieve
their mission because they don'tsee the point of it.
They don't see that there's apotential for them to hit that
goal.
It's too risky, and so youextrapolate that across any
organization.
That's the same way aboutasking people to risk when it
comes to ideas or innovation or,you know, being being
(14:24):
psychologically safe.
All of those things aredependent on people feeling like
that.
What they do is actually goingto come to some sort of fruition
, or it's going to be helpful,or they can see themselves in
the future of their organization.
You don't have hope.
(14:49):
You do not get anyone on boardwith AI, and this is why we see
one in two of the globalworkforce now saying they have
AI anxiety.
Hope is super fundamental and Iactually feel like it's the
economic tool that we need ifwe're really looking at solving
big policy problems.
We're talking about women, andthis whole fertility crisis is a
big conversation we're havingall the time, and so you see
(15:12):
countries putting in a wholebunch of money for women at work
four-day work week in Korea andthese types of things but when
you actually talk to women andfamilies that are talking about
why they're putting off havingchildren, they say I don't see a
world where I can bring a childinto it is heavy and it's not
financial incentives that weneed to give people now.
(15:36):
It's hope.
This is the economic driverthat we all need across
organizations, societally andglobally, and until we really
get to that upstream kind ofthinking about it, we're still
going to be in crisis in thenext 20 years.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I want to double click on this because we talk to
a lot of folks, especially atthe middle management level,
that are burnt out.
They feel like they've beenasked to do more.
Just like you said.
They're feeling thatdiscrepancy between feeling
purpose and being like whatpurpose you know.
And so when you say hope is thestrategy, and then we have
middle managers that are feelingjust how the hell am I supposed
(16:14):
to have hope?
What does hope look like for meas a middle manager?
How do I show up with hope whenI've got 55,000 things going on
?
How do you respond?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
to that.
So I love that you've asked methis, because hope is actually
one of the easiest skills thatwe can build, and so much of the
book is changing culture in 20minutes or less.
Like I've been saying, it'sjust these 20 minute meetings
here, these incremental shiftsover here.
It's not a big value change.
It's actually middle managersare the ones that are the most
(16:43):
empowered to make these changes.
And when you think about hope,it's really based on Snyder's
hope theory and this is whatI've talked about for many, many
years.
It's this idea of having goals.
So really focus in your teamaround setting goals and not
five-year goals.
But how do we set daily, weekly, monthly goals that lead up to
(17:04):
that year, that lead up to thatbig career pathing five years?
And then the second part ishaving pathways.
So you're planning your goals,but do you have a plan B?
Do you have a plan C?
Do you have a plan Z?
Having secondary and tertiaryplans around your goals makes
you feel like that one goal, ifI don't hit it this way, I have
(17:26):
all this other backup.
I've had all this otherplanning to hit that goal.
And then it's about agency.
We need autonomy in hittingthose goals.
Google does a great jobco-creating goals, talking with
peers.
Peers celebrate.
It's fluid, it's justchallenging enough that you feel
like you've accomplishedsomething, but not so
challenging that you could neveraccomplish it, and not too easy
(17:47):
that you feel like, oh well,that was easy.
So you don't feel that sense ofaccomplishment when you reach
it.
All of this builds up cognitivehope day to day.
And you know, lululemon isreally good I was their
happiness strategy strategistway back and they do a good job
of having these BHAGs, these big, hairy, audacious goals.
But then they also have theycelebrate the small wins.
(18:09):
So that weekly goal or themonthly goal, the manager can be
like, yeah, like sticker, youknow, like here's a gift card at
the end of you know youachieving this two month goal or
this quarterly goal, like theseare the things that we, we need
to help people do, becausesubconsciously it builds up our
hope capacity or cognitive hope,and the more hope we feel, the
(18:31):
more we feel like we canaccomplish bigger goals.
And then the more risk-takingwe are, the more innovative we
are, the more cohesive we arewith the rest of our team
because we're you know, we'reworking, we're gelling together
in a really helpful kind of wayit just breeds such a good
social contagion of hope acrossthe culture.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, I love that.
I know you've talked about itin some of your past books too.
But that idea of chunkingthings out for your folks and it
doesn't need to be the beehiveswe all love the beehives and
the moonshots and it's all sexy,sexy but sometimes it just
comes down to those small winsuntil you get the bigger wins
and chunking it for your folks.
Oh, I talk about purpose too,because we talked about hope and
then you pull up into purposeright, that's that second
(19:11):
element of that strongfoundation that you talk about
when it feels like your org ison the fourth reorg and you
actually don't know where thehell it's going.
But you're leading a team andyou're like, all right, here's
our purpose.
Like, how do you do that inthat 20 minute sprint?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
This is a really key, I think, when you ask me of,
like, what are the things thatwe get wrong about leadership
and culture?
Sorry, this is another placewhere we fall short a lot of,
and it's because of the purposegap.
A lot of the people in thatexecutive role feel very
connected to the big missionstatement.
They feel it like they're in it.
But most of the workforcedoesn't really care about the
(19:53):
big mission statement.
They're not thinking about thevision every day, they're really
in the work and sometimes thatwork can feel very monotonous,
really boring, and so you wantto stop trying to make it so far
away from people.
You want to tie the day-to-daywork into things that people
care about, and you do this inthis way.
(20:13):
That's very practical and I'vewatched this intervention and
tried it across organizationsand it's been incredible.
But it's 20 minutes of anon-work-related check-in where
you ask what lit you up, whatstressed you out and what can we
do for each other to make nextweek easier.
So the lighting up piecemanagers are able to kind of get
clues into what excites people.
(20:33):
You know, what do you careabout?
Does it really matter that yourkids are in a good school?
Do you care about watchingBroadway films.
You have a passion for going toNew York once a year and seeing
all the Broadway films.
I mean, these are things whereit should seem innocuous but
it's actually.
It's really great data.
This is where you're like how doI motivate people and connect
(20:55):
their day-to-day tasks to thatthing?
You know, and if and then whenyou look, you know at the stress
stressors.
People aren't going to say whatthey're stressed out about to
their boss in day, week one orweek two Absolutely not.
You're putting on the front.
You know it takes monthsactually, but that consistency
and frequency and managersshowing up every week saying I'm
(21:16):
still going to ask and I'mstill going to share my
stressors, that vulnerabilityand leadership opens up
psychological safety amongst theteam.
So people then start sharing,like what is going on, and if
you create an open space, peoplewill tell you this is what I
need, this is what's holding meback from connecting to my
purpose or doing what makes mefeel good every day.
(21:37):
And so over time, consistencyand frequency builds trust and
then you get to use this andthen the quick win piece is the
hope building.
So every single week you'rehelping each other cohesively in
this team building thing likehelping each other to solve
problems, and so work getseasier, gets more fun, it's less
(21:57):
toxic, it's also lessexhausting and you can help each
other.
You learn these small ways thatyou can tactically help each
other with workload and sooverall, you start to feel like
your work has more meaning, itmatters more.
You feel more aligned with yourmotivators and your purpose to
the day-to-day tasks and itchanges so much of how people
(22:20):
feel about their work and how itcontributes and makes an impact
.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I love that too, because at the end of the day
sometimes I think about if youdistill down what everybody just
really basically needs at ahuman level.
It's just to be seen.
Or for someone to be interested,genuinely, like what does light
you up?
Or what are you about, you andme together, human to human.
It's like simple, elegantquestioning that really helps
(22:47):
you, as a manager, understandand get the data to your point,
but also enable someone to feelseen.
We've all had leaders where wefelt that potentially, hopefully
you have, and you have hadleaders where they don't give a
shit.
You know what I'm saying.
They don't care.
Yeah, they don't care, andyou're kind of dying for them to
ask or just be interested, likedo you even know me?
I had a leader one time askingme how my kids are doing, after
(23:10):
I'd worked with them for fourmonths.
I have a kid, I don't have two,and it was you know.
It's like those moments whereit's like you're not even in
this.
This is so transactional foryou.
I love that on the one-on-one.
And the other thing I want toask about you talk about the
importance of friendships atwork.
Mel and I actually fun factwe're work friends and then we
(23:33):
started this podcast and so weknow the value of work
friendships.
But I'm wondering howorganizations can facilitate
community more like the idea ofthe true community.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
This has always been something that I've been so
interested in is this communitypiece, because going to work and
not having that person a person, just a single person there,
that's all you need.
But people that don't have that.
It's just a very miserableexperience for them and I wrote
about that in the burnoutepidemic like a toxic, unhappy
(24:02):
group of people that you workwith can actually reduce your
lifespan, like that's howdetrimental it is on your mental
health and well-being.
So you need to have that personor else work just does, just
feels really lonely.
And what's happened in the lastfive years?
And everyone wants to blame iton remote work.
But I don't think that that'sthe case and I've shared really
(24:23):
the data to say it's not remotework that has impacted
relationships.
We've been dealing withlowliness at work for a long
time but it's that we haveorganizations that just focus on
simplex relationships which aretransactional, like you said.
It's that I need you for this.
It's basically a sharedservices and that's how you
interact.
(24:43):
But organizations that reallyfocus on building multiplex
relationships where it's.
I know you and I know that youhave a kid, not two kids or
three kids, and I know that thisis where that non-work related
checking comes in handy becauseit's about developing more
robust relationships that createbonds.
(25:08):
Five years, especially withthese return to office mandates
when people go back into theoffice, it's not like they're
spending more time doing what weshould be doing, which is
collaborating and connectingwith each other and bringing
back rituals.
You know, I love that Atlassianhas the hackathon every quarter,
and there's companies that do areally good job of pulling
people together to do cool stuffand they build relationships.
We've lost a lot of investmentin team building and networking
(25:31):
and a lot of that social piece,that social binding, is gone,
and so right now, the way thatwe've developed friends would be
different than you and Mel,which would be organic.
It used to be like you'd walkin the office and maybe you were
friends with someone inmarketing, maybe you talked to
someone in accounting.
You'd have ways of havingconversations with lots of
(25:51):
different people.
We've continued to hear in thedata is that it's very siloed
now, so we only care about ourteam.
We don't know anything going onacross the rest of the
organization and the thing thatI used to look for which was
compatibility and you know ifyou made me laugh or we were
both interested in cool movies.
Now we're looking forconscientiousness and
(26:13):
accountability.
Those are the traits we'relooking for in our friendships,
which is very, it's very theones to go dancing on Friday
night with their accountable,conscientious friend Like no
line.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
So that didn't even accumulate with our country.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I guess that sounds fun.
That's it.
We're only looking to haverelationships at work that will
continue to foster better workand to me, like that is the
thing that we need to rework isbringing people back into spaces
where, like I was talking inthe book about the third space
making it like Starbucks, whereyou're going there to debate and
(26:54):
discuss and be connected andthen you go home or wherever, to
your own little world to do theheads down stuff.
But right now, going into workis just like a replica of
working from home and that's notbuilding any sort of friendship
or community that anyone reallycares about.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
It's interesting, though.
I mean companies could totallyreimagine those spaces to be
more communal or like office, asan amenity to foster that
organic relationship building orget back to it.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, and we're so time starved and we're so burned
out that our social tank isreally, you know, has been
depleted and so again, it's likehygiene.
We need to, we need to manageoverwork, we need to create
space for people to actuallyconnect.
You know, in the again, the 20minutes or less.
Cornell research in the booksaid 20 minutes of having lunch
(27:44):
with one person once a weekcompletely changed the dynamic
of organizations.
They found that morale wasimproved, job satisfaction
increased, people made lessmistakes, which I thought was
really interesting.
Their work performance improved.
And that was 20 minutes of justhaving lunch away from your
desk once a week.
It's super simple again, butthese are the things that create
(28:08):
incremental network effect,that we're all kind of doing
some of these pieces of thepuzzle.
Eventually the culture willflourish would be.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I would have the 20 minutes, the lunch away from my
desk more, but I would invitesomeone from an accounting or
the gallon marketing or whateverjust to network more earlier on
and just go to lunch withpeople more.
I wish I would have done that.
It's so nourishing.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
It's so special.
I worked in a big law firm whenI first started out in New York
and we did have that.
We had a lunch crew and theyhad a cafeteria, but everyone
knew everyone.
It was a mixture ofadministrative staff.
Paralegals, even like the lunchstaff crew, would come in and
eat with us and it was onemassive table.
There were 25 of us everysingle day.
(29:00):
That's what we looked forwardto and we talked about
everything but work and it justmade our week, but it made work
better.
And to this day, and it justmade our week, but it made work
better.
And to this day, even thoughthat firm's long gone they
merged with someone else, thebuilding's been taken over, but
there's a Facebook group ofalumni from that workplace down
from everyone to security, toall that crew, because that's
(29:20):
how close we were.
It was like a very specialenvironment which you don't see
anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Really, I love that, Mel.
I love that because in the bookI shared a case study of this
person I interviewed at a techcompany and he met with a lot of
his coworkers and people in thebuilding for lunch.
They were pulled back on aproject that ended up making
them having to work all theselong hours and slowly but surely
they abandoned their lunch andhe said that his team started
(29:47):
dropping out and moving tocompetitors, and even in the
exit interviews for me it justfelt like we stopped having
lunch, we stopped caring abouteach other.
It's more than that.
It's more to a lot of people,and he ended up after six years
being on a track to be in a highposition in that organization,
left to a competitor and heinitiated the lunches in the in
(30:09):
his other place and it becamethis whole popular thing again.
It's so much more than peoplerealize it's.
It's the pausing, it's theconnecting, it's the not talking
about work, it's developingthese depths of bonds that
sustain and and we're notinvesting in that anymore
because we're thinking 20minutes, oh well, that means I
have to leave 20 minutes late,I'm going to be stuck in traffic
(30:31):
.
It just means more work.
When I come home at night I'llbe in my pajamas working till
midnight.
When you're burned out, whenyou have that kind of toxic
productivity, you don't engagein 20 minute lunches.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Now, I also am a fan of in virtual environments,
because I do think you could dothis in a virtual environment,
like having a fun weekly debateon something random like is a
hot dog a sandwich?
Put it up on.
Teams for everyone tocontribute to the conversation,
right, like how do you getwhat's a weekly question?
But like, get creative, whatcan you do to engage everybody
across the org?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, Is pot fruit considered to be acceptable on a
pizza?
Yes, no, it is a good question.
Yeah, you have lots of debate,but I do think it needs to be
levity, you know, and about allof the new challenges, and boy
(31:46):
do we have them.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Ai, multi-generational workforce I
think we just read somethingrecently about Gen Z doesn't
even want what we have, sothere's a whole problem there.
The backlash on DEI, thebacklash on remote work,
extensive burnout as you writeabout.
Employee happiness is justcontinuing to drop.
When you think about all ofthese new challenges, what's the
(32:09):
one thing workplaces need tofocus on now to overcome the
competition against all of thesethings when they're trying to
create a good culture?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
One of the things I keep telling leaders that I work
with is why do you feel, like,five years into this complete
cataclysmic shift in work, thatyou're supposed to have it
figured out?
I mean, no one even knows whathybrid is Like.
Why is it two or three days aweek?
We don't even know.
Hybrid could be four times ayear.
Hybrid could mean lots ofdifferent things, and there is
(32:40):
this kind of ego, I think,around us needing to have this
thing sorted and wanting to justput the pandemic and now poly
crisis on some sort of backburner and not think about it.
And so I've been saying the onething that leaders need to do
is just let go of all of thatsort of that expectation and
(33:01):
recognize with self-awarenessthat we are in a completely
different mindset.
Behavioral, you know, thebehavioral mindset of this
workforce today is clearlydifferent.
The priorities have shifted.
We have Gen Zs that do see usas terrible models for what work
looks like.
You know most of us burning out, all of us resigning, saying we
(33:23):
hate work, we're not greatmodels, and so of course they're
going to say I don't want thatand they're going to find new
avenues.
We're losing our mature workers.
They're retiring early at apace that we've never seen
before, and they say I don'treally fit into this workforce,
it's changed.
So let's get on top of that andsay, okay, let's be agile,
(33:48):
let's iterate, let's test, let'ssee if this works and if it
doesn't, that's okay.
We're going to be just muchmore fluid in the way that we
build our strategies until wefeel like, over time, I feel
like we're in the pilot stage ofthis experiment that you know,
when you look at 550 years oldfor the office, we're looking at
a pretty long time before we'regoing to get any of this kind
(34:11):
of mapped out.
So for me it's about selfawareness, agility and pausing
and kind of coming up with a newplan.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah, well, it's also like will we really ever have
this all mapped out?
Or is this just start beingokay with the unknown and
working together to be like Idon't know either, and we'll
figure it out together?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I love that you say that, because even five-year
strategies right now, when wehave Gen AI and what's changed
we have to imagine that that'sgoing to be five years where the
things that we thought weregoing to happen have been
totally changed around, and sothat is really.
It is understanding that we'rein a state of uncertainty and
will be for quite some time now.
That's why, if you really wantto be successful, it is managing
through change and learning howto do that much better.
Unfortunately, we just see ademographic of CEOs.
Most of them are male, most ofthem are in their 60s, and it's
(35:12):
been very difficult.
We've seen just that liketrying to shift over into
especially what Gen Zs areasking for.
That feels so foreign, it feelsso far away from the way that
they were professionally raised.
So I have empathy for bothgroups, but we do need to
connect somewhere, becausehaving divisions, that and us
(35:35):
being that far apart in ourgoals, there's no way we can hit
those plans, that vision, if wedon't start talking to each
other.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, if we can't find common ground, it is moving
to a danger zone.
I think last week Francesca andI were, we were covering new
week new headlines and we readsomething around how it was like
73 percent of Gen Z's that werepolled Don't quote me on this,
because I think it was somewherearound there where they were
mentioning they don't even wantthe job.
Like we're heading for amanager meltdown this year, in
(36:08):
fact, because they can't findcommon ground and what they see
is what they don't want.
But, as you mentioned, it'sdeeply affecting the future of
organizations and business.
So what are your thoughts onthat?
Like, how can we start to findcommon ground?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I say first across the organization.
Even managers can do this.
How often do you expressfrustration with an entire
generation and how often do wehave conversations like oh, I'm
so frustrated like my boomer, myXer, whatever bandager, usually
(36:45):
Xers are boomers.
Everyone's a boomer if they'reover the age of like 45.
So it's like how does my Xer.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I don't appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
That I do not appreciate being I don't like
being lumped in there but, I'mhere but to get everyone on to
say I'm a boomer, so it's likeanyone over a certain age.
It's kind of like thisexasperation.
And yet then we see this riseof youngism.
We've never seen it this harshbefore, where young people are
coming into the office and it'sbasically like they're already
defied as lazy.
(37:12):
And if they do ask for thingslike respectful hours so that
they can have friends, I meanthey're just trying to meet
people and develop relationshipsthat might be long lasting, so
they can have family and plantheir lives.
But if you're working 60 or 70hours a week, it's just not
appropriate for anything else inyour life.
(37:34):
The fact that they're askingfor this with this perception
that they're just lazy, it seemslike what they're asking for is
just so, gen Z, that putspeople off.
They're opting out of theworkforce.
Because of it.
They're willing to accept anextraordinarily less amount of
pay.
All the data showing it's up to37 percent less pay to have
(37:56):
work life balance.
So for them they're not likeXers and boomers were where it
was by the house get married,have kids, so you have all these
golden handcuffs tying you toyour job.
They're putting off buyinghomes later because of financial
the situation that they're in.
They just don't have that.
They're living longer withtheir parents, they're not
(38:16):
getting married, they're nothaving kids, so their ability to
be mobile and take less paymakes it so we're not holding
onto them, and with the samecarrot.
And that means having to beflexible.
And so I keep telling managersjust like audit your language,
audit the narratives that go onin your organization.
Try to remove those things thatreally do separate you.
(38:38):
Auditing your language reallychanges how you feel about
another group, and I should alsosay the youngest generation.
Their whole point is to pushback on the status quo, like
that's what you expect.
Every generation does that.
Why are we surprised that thisgeneration is pushing back on
the status quo, like that's whatyou expect.
Every generation does that.
Why are we surprised that thisgeneration is pushing back on
the status quo Like this istheir job, this is every
(39:00):
generation's job is to questionwhether the generation before
them have done the right job.
You know, societally andpolitically and economically,
and every generation's done that.
So here we have anothergeneration that's just coming in
to tell us we're doing a badjob.
That's the way it goes.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
I feel like Gen Z's role is actually to remind us
that we're all human beings inhere for a finite amount of time
, so maybe we should all stopprioritizing work as the number
one priority.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
I love it.
I say Gen Z's say well-being isnot antithetical to work ethic.
They say that loud and clearand I fully agree with that.
So it's probably why I havemaybe my bias to say let's
listen to Gen Zs because youknow, maybe they're pushing the
pendulum really far in onedirection, but that's the only
way that we're going to havechange, that sort of meets in
(39:52):
the middle.
So let's let them do that andthen figure out a way that sort
of marries all worlds.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Couldn't agree more.
Another big topic is AI, andyou talk about the fear of
becoming obsolete.
So how can leaders navigate allof what's happening in AI today
and really kind of squash theFOBO that's happening for their
teams?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
So I love the term FOBO.
I mean Gallup really strippedit with that one.
You know I love JOMO the joy ofmissing out.
That's one of my favorite.
Fobo is a good one too.
The data is showing that it'sreally increasing, and it's
increasing a lot for youngercohorts.
It used to be automation, somature workers were ones that
were most threat.
You saw that obsolescencereally coming out in that group.
(40:41):
But our younger generation arefeeling it, and a lot of that is
that we've got again likehyperbolic language.
We're in a mass extinctionevent I robot and everything's
going to fall apart, or it's 300million jobs are going to be
lost, or or then it'severything's rosy with AI.
Everything's going to be great.
You know we're going to,they're going to be our pilot
(41:02):
and you won't have to work again, and I don't like the idea of
people not wanting to work ornot working again.
A, that's an economiccatastrophe, because how are we
going to care for everyone notworking?
And B, just from a humanstandpoint, we get a lot of fuel
from work, and so what?
(41:22):
I have this LinkedIn course thatI basically took that chapter
of FOBO and brought that in tosay how do we create AI
enthusiasm instead of AI anxiety, because it's here and that's
the reality and so we need tonormalize it.
We need to talk about howubiquitous AI is in the rest of
our lives so it isn't so scary.
(41:43):
We need to make sure thatpeople feel skilled up and not
overlooking mature workers,because we're seeing that
they're getting constantlyoverlooked for training in AI.
It's kind of like both of themare giving up and yet pretty
robust research looked at matureworkers and said and there was
40% of them that said I wouldstay longer if I had this
(42:03):
continued training, if I feltlike you were training me up to
handle this, but I'm overlookedconstantly.
So there's things that we needto do around training and just
preparedness.
We also want to create curiouscultures.
Have a once a month meetingaround some new experimentation
that you had with AI.
You share it back with the team.
It can be personal orprofessional.
(42:25):
You can have some personal,some professional so you can
talk about oh, I did this trickand I used AI and now I've been
able to do my work faster.
It's been great.
So that's really important iscreate experimentation, and I
would say the most importantpart and this is probably at the
executive leadership level iswe need to deliver on the
promise of AI.
(42:45):
So the promise of AI was thatyou will have your mundane tasks
taken away and then you willhave really creative, cool work
that you get to do.
A lot of people that I'veinterviewed are saying I had the
mundane stuff taken away, butnow I have extreme boredom and
I'm not getting any of that.
So there's a promiseundelivered.
And then also Gen AI issupposed to save us time, so if
(43:09):
we're finished our project early, we should be given that time
back.
It shouldn't be that we're justadding more productivity when
it's supposed to createefficiencies.
So these are two things at thepolicy level that I think
executive leaders need to say.
Are we delivering on thepromise of AI in these two areas
?
And maybe it's changing the waywe measure productivity.
(43:30):
It's more around goals, nothours, and so that's at the GDP
level that we need to be lookingat that.
But just even in organizations,we can change policies to make
the promise of AI feel like it'sworth investing in for
employees.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
I'm wondering if most organizations even have mapped
out what the promise of AI wasto their employees, because
they're very focused onstakeholders shareholders but
not viewing their employees asstakeholders and or saying this
is what AI can do for you.
Like, I don't feel like a lotof organizations have explicitly
said that or put that in theirEBP as either it's a major
(44:09):
problem.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
A major problem.
The Microsoft Trends reportthat came out in collaboration
with LinkedIn found that 60% ofCEOs don't believe that there's
a strategy, and so this is whathappened, and there was this
really interesting report, too,that showed that technology
wasn't even on the radar of sortof business disruptions up
until the last two years, and itwent from not even being on the
top set of stressors that CEOswere feeling to sixth place and
(44:38):
then in a year to first place.
This last year was like firstplace biggest disruptors to
business, and so everyone'sreally just adopted AI.
Because I need to adopt AI, Ineed to show that I'm
competitive, but with no.
I need to show that I'mcompetitive but with no strategy
, and you need to know your whybefore you adopt AI.
Know your why before you adoptAI, so then you can then
(45:01):
communicate that, and that lendsto managers being able to
communicate the why.
I'm curious about whatorganizations or are there?
Speaker 1 (45:17):
organizations that are getting this right.
I'm curious about whatorganizations, or are there
organizations that are gettingthis right?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, there are.
There's just so much right nowthat I'm seeing that are, you
know, are making it difficultfor people to stay on track with
some of that investment.
I talked about Bain and Companyin the book.
I mean they're doing thingslike even just cold rooms for
women that have menopause, forexample.
(45:54):
It seems again so simple, likejust having spaces that you can
work in that are cooler.
But for me as a perimenopausal47-year-old, I had the worst
brain fog in writing this lastbook in the first six months and
I actually felt like I'm notsupposed to be a writer anymore.
The amount of questioning of mycapacity and my efficacy was
(46:16):
really wild.
And then it was going to mydoctor and she was able to just
say I think you're going throughperimenopause, and that was
such a weight lifted.
I really did feel like I wasnot good at my job anymore and I
think of women at this age peakcareer my job anymore, and I
(46:37):
think of women at this age peakcareer feeling ineffective.
And so there are organizationsthat are saying we can't have
that.
We need to do things that aremore responsible for women.
We still are seeing, which Ifeel is like these big declines
in keeping women in theworkforce.
We're at the thinnest executivepipeline that we've seen yet in
history.
For the first time in a decade,global CEOs of women have gone
(46:59):
down, and it was already like ashit number in the first place.
I think it was 11 and a halfpercent.
Now it's 10 and a half percentyeah, celebrating incremental
gains.
I'm very over that, and so Ithink work isn't working for
women.
We need diverse thinking.
We've demonstrated in AnitaWilliams Woolley's work at
Google that collectiveintelligence increases when you
(47:20):
have more female genderrepresentation on teams.
I want people to start lookingat this as this is a business
strategy, not a benevolentstrategy.
This is not to be benevolent.
I'm not being an ally, I'mbeing a capitalist when I in my
executive pipeline, and so themore we can look at it as a
business imperative versus abenevolence imperative, the more
(47:43):
we'll.
I think we'll put that into thestrategic priority set, and
right now it just it's a lotabout allyship and doing good
and not seeing diversity inrepresented in leadership is
actually being really good forbusiness, and the more that we
can change that narrative andtalk about it in that way, the
(48:04):
less it's something that can becut out, and I do think that,
and you would have read in thebook that I do think the way
we've done it so far hasn't beenreally successful.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
What I've always tried to reconcile is the data,
even though these programshaven't been around for that
long.
When you look at the history ofwork, I appreciate that, of how
powerful your ROI is oninclusion, belonging women in
(48:35):
leadership roles, diversity,happiness at work.
I mean all of the things thatyou're talking about.
Hope, purpose, right, the datais there, the return on
investment is there, harddollars, and you can make the
monetary case for all of thisand I'm wondering is it the
narrative around?
(48:55):
We need to start talking abouthard dollars on this all the
time, when we talk about thisstuff to sell it more.
What is this flip in thenarrative?
I can't figure it out you knowwhat.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
It's always going to be a bottom line issue and as we
start to see a deficit in ourtalents resources and this is
what I think Anita in the bookthat I love that she shared is
just like we're wasting thisincredible talent pool and no
one seems to really care thatit's slipping away.
(49:28):
And what I'm seeing is and Ithink it's actually, in a lot of
ways, maybe beneficial to womenis that women are saying I'm
seeing is and I think it'sactually, in a lot of ways,
maybe beneficial to women isthat women are saying I'm going
to start to build up my own IP,I'm going to start up my own
companies and, because they areso good at it, they're going to
create their own space andthey're going to start to
demonstrate that they don'treally need that other
(49:49):
infrastructure.
And we're going to create thiswhole economy of women leading
organizations and actuallyhaving patents and having
opportunities for other women,because women will hire more
women, because you hire like,and so, as that starts to break
ground, which we are seeing,we're seeing so many more women
move into part-time roles sothat they can work on some of
(50:10):
these other things.
We are seeing like IP for womenincrease.
We are seeing women opt out ofworkplaces that are not
inclusive and moving toorganizations that are, so
they're demonstrating with theirfeet, and so the more that
becomes something.
That is a bottom line issue,which might take a while to show
(50:31):
up maybe irrationallyoptimistic of me, but the data
feels like it supports it, thatthat's what's going to start to
happen and we're going to seethis very different shift in
this economy for women.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Well, it's funny, francesca and I just did a whole
thing.
I mean, women drive the globaleconomy.
We own almost all of thepurchasing power globally and a
recent article said if you, youknow, if the economy is running
well, you might want to start bythinking women today, and one
of the stats that recently cameout was, in 2023 alone, 49% of
(51:09):
small businesses for the firsttime, more women than men are
starting small businesses.
So I think, yeah, I mean, thestats are showing they're
leaving in droves becausethey're leaving places where
they're not considered.
They aren't.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
And policies like return to office are actually
extremely exclusive for women,and until we're solving the
second shift and making surethat unpaid labor is balanced
across both teams in the family,this is the only option for
women.
So those exclusive policieswomen are just like.
That's not what I want.
The core heart of the book isthat we faced our mortality as a
(51:44):
collective, and what happens tothe brain when you face your
mortality is you actually startto subconsciously reprioritize
things that are about legacyleaving.
It's more about what mattersyou know in the world, what
matters to you as a human being,and so for women it was.
They felt years of just havingto take care of their family,
(52:09):
protect them from such risk.
It was a very strong emotionalexperience for a lot of families
and women in particular, and sonow they're looking at it after
they face their finitude.
They're like this thing thatI'm doing, that's toxic, that
does not include me, that doesnot care about me.
I don't really see that assomething that in when a life is
(52:33):
short mentality that I canaccept anymore, and when you're
not faced with that, you reallydon't see that there is
something that's sort of likehappening very quickly.
You don't have the same urgencyon it, but that experience and
polycrisis has put urgency on usto leave legacies, put urgency
on us to do more with our lives,and so for the people that are
(52:56):
pro-social, for the people thatcare about the world and care
about these things, they'relooking at work as not something
that matters as much, butthey're still equally ambitious,
and that's the thing that'scool about women.
They're like how do I make workfit into my life instead of
trying to fit into work'sexpectation of me, and I think
that's like where it's going tobe really cool.
(53:17):
I have gone back a few times toRiyadh.
So Saudi Arabia has this realfocus on 2030 women empowerment
goals.
So I also think other countriesare going to go.
Ok, we always looked at thatcountry as being so far behind,
it wasn't progressive, andthey're putting this huge
investment in women right nowbecause they do understand it
(53:37):
from an economic standpoint Ifone of the things that Saudi
Arabia does understand is wealthand how to build wealth, and
they are just looking at womenas their builders of wealth
right now.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
All right, jennifer, we're going to move into a rapid
round.
This is not a pop quiz.
It's meant to be fun and to geta little more versatile.
To get to know you, we'll startwith the work question.
It's 2030.
What do you think work's goingto look like?
This is such a great question.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
It's going to look the same, but I do think that
we're going to see incrementaldifferences in a more pro-social
way.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Okay, finish this sentence.
For companies to build workcultures everyone wants.
Leaders need to model thebehavior.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Employees can't be what they can't see.
Leaders need to model thebehavior.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Next sentence Work should feel more like blank and
less like blank.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
More like fuel for you know your sense of
accomplishment.
Less like a grind Damn right.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Not it?
What music are you listening toright now?
Speaker 2 (55:07):
I'm super into Olivia Dean.
I don't know if you've heardher, but she's so good and she
has a song called Dive.
I would highly recommend it.
But she just became super wellknown because I guess she has a
song on the Bridget Jones newmovie, so people are learning
about her.
But she's great, okay.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
Is Dive one of your favorite songs from her, or do
you have a favorite that's likeon repeat?
Speaker 2 (55:34):
Well, Lola Young does the song Messy, which I really
like, and she does a version ofit which I love.
But Dive, yeah, there'ssomething about it that's sort
of catchy and lovely, but a lotof her songs are like that and I
really like Bakar B-A-K-A-R.
If you just want to have a goodvibes hang out in your car and
feel like kind of like movingyour shoulders, yeah, that's a
(55:57):
good one.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Got to get some jams for my Trader Joe's parking lot.
My bell Going on All right.
What are you reading?
Speaker 2 (56:04):
right now.
Oh, so I like almost solelyread fiction, which is hilarious
as a nonfiction writer.
But I'm reading Coco Meller'sbook.
I don't know if you have heardof her.
She's really good.
It's oh God I just blanked onthe book on the name it's
Frankenstein and oh God, I can'tremember.
But it's really such a funlittle book and she's got cool.
(56:30):
I don't know really cool waysof thinking about characters.
And I'm also reading James,which is this cool book that is.
So I read multiple books at thesame time and I'm always
reading.
I have a book with me, I carryit with me all the time, I read
constantly Like I'm a superreader.
And James is the idea of Reedtelling the story of Huck Finn
(56:53):
from Jim's point of view.
Speaker 3 (56:55):
How fun it's really so far.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
It's really neat.
So one sort of beachy reads andthen the other is like I got to
have some meat in my brain,okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
Who do you personally really admire?
Speaker 2 (57:10):
It's a really good question because there's lots of
people that I really do admire,but you know, I would say my
mom.
So my mom was the first nursepractitioner in all of Canada
and she's in the books, you knowand she didn't ever talk about
her stuff because she was anurse and a nurse practitioner
(57:33):
and so you kind of would comehome.
She had told me later on inlife that she would come home
and she had, like, had to dealwith really traumatic, awful
things, especially in a lot ofcar accidents in rural towns
where she lived.
And even when we moved, youknow, to Canada, like to Eastern
Canada, what happened was justlike this sense of, I don't know
(57:54):
, having to come home and be agood mom and also have to deal
with all this stuff.
And when she moved, she had togive up being a nurse
practitioner because there didnot exist in Ontario.
So she was like, ok, well thenI'll figure something else out.
She was very resilient, so sheended up teaching nursing at
McMaster University, which washuge, and then working in ICU at
(58:17):
McMaster University McMasterHospital, which one of like it's
a sick kids hospital, so theydo just great work and then she
decided that she wanted to stopnursing and started her own
manufacturing company and soldquilts and had like multiple
stores and a whole bunch ofsewers working for her as like
the final stage in her life.
(58:38):
And I just feel, like you know,as a person that we never
thought was the entrepreneur, Irealized she was and she just
didn't just do things like insmall ways, she just did things
in big ways, but she was soquiet about it and it wasn't
until later on that I went wow,like you have subconsciously
been my person that I've admired, that I've tried to mirror my
(59:02):
life after Okay, Last one what'sone piece of advice you want
everyone to have?
This has been hugely beneficialfor me, because I didn't learn
this until I burned out and it's.
You can have anything, noteverything, and it's always
about a series of choices and weconstantly want to have
(59:23):
everything and you can haveanything.
You just need to choose in yourpriority structure what matters
most and when.
You have that really figuredout in your priority structure
what matters most and when youhave that really figured out
that anything feels likeeverything.
Speaker 3 (59:40):
I love it, thank you, thanks for sharing with us.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Yeah, I love it.
So easy to talk to you.
Oh, it's pleasant.
You have fun.
Yes, it's great.
Speaker 3 (59:52):
This episode was produced, edited and all things
by us myself, mel Plett andFrancesca Rennery.
Our music is by Pink Zebra andif you loved this conversation
and you want to contribute yourthoughts with us, please do.
You can visit us atyourworkfriendscom, but you can
(01:00:12):
also join us over on LinkedIn.
We have a LinkedIn communitypage and we have the TikToks and
Instagrams.
So please join us in thesocials and if you like this and
you've benefited from thisepisode and you think someone
else can benefit from thisepisode, please rate and
subscribe.
We'd really appreciate it.
That helps keep us going.
(01:00:32):
Take care, friends.
Bye, friends.
Okay, finish this sentence.
Work should feel more likeblank and less like blank.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
More like fuel for you know your sense of
accomplishment, Less like agrind Damn right.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Love it, Love it hey, welcome to your work, friend.
I'm francesca ranieri and I'mmel plett.
(00:35):
Mel, what's going?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
on.
You know, spring is springingand it's sprung.
Almost.
Last week was the arctic, thecold here, but this week it is
sunshine almost until 6 30 so,and I hear the birds chirping.
I will take it.
How about?
What's going on with you?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
say what you will about portland in the winter.
We've had a very sunny winterfor portland, but what most
people might not know about portis in the winter the moss turns
like an electric green.
It's like almost fluorescent.
So it's just a very cool timeto be here.
I love it.
Yeah, pretty yeah.
Yeah, I got to enjoy the nature.
You know, got to enjoy thenature you do.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I think I'm one of those sad sufferers the seasonal
affective disorder.
I have one of those lamps.
Have you seen those lamps thathelp you slowly wake up with the
sunshine?
I use that.
I need the atmosphere to feelsunshine included.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Totally get it.
Completely get it, completelyget it.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, we met with Jennifer Moss.
Jennifer is a workplace expert,harvard Business Review
columnist, author of UnlockingHappiness at Work, author of the
Burnout Epidemic and now hernew book, why Are we here?
And it's all about creatingworkplace cultures where
(01:58):
everyone wants to work and wejust had such a fantastic
conversation with her, Francesca.
What did you think about thisconversation?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, I was stoked to talk to Jennifer because she is
, to me, the leading person tolook at on burnout.
Any of the work that Jenniferdoes it is absolutely locked and
loaded with the latest researchon things.
To have her answer the questionaround how do you create a
culture that people actuallywant to show up for was really
interesting.
The book is fascinating.
(02:27):
She is someone that you knowhow you meet people like.
They're so accomplished andthey're so freaking good at what
they do, and then they're justa very cool person on top of
that.
Jennifer Moss.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, 100%.
She was amazing.
I couldn't agree with you more.
You and I talk about this allthe time COVID and then our own
life experiences and things thathappen outside of work have
really reprioritized what ismeaningful for us and where our
priorities stand, our valuesgoing forward, and I think so
(03:00):
many people are going throughkind of that level setting and
gut check for themselves.
What I really loved aboutJennifer's book and I do want to
read a quote that she startedwith that made me really think
about what most people are goingthrough.
She mentions that people aren'tless ambitious or lazy, we're
just feeling uninspired, andthat really stood out to me and
I was like, yes, 100%.
(03:22):
She's weaving together all ofthese really big concepts about
work and providing tangiblethings that you can do today for
yourself, for your team, tomake workplaces that are
inspiring.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
It's practical, tangible, and most of the things
that she talks about in thebook and with us are things you
can do in 20 minutes or less,sold in 20 minutes or less, 20
minutes or less, 20 minutes orless, 20 minutes or less.
Like, come on, let's go, let'sgo, let's do this.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah Well, friends with that, here's Jennifer Moss.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Jen, I'm going to jump right in here.
What is the biggest myth aboutworkplace idea?
That you can't have one withoutthe other.
If you invest in well-being andyou invest in employee
happiness that somehow that'sjust like a nice to have and
you're a human-centered leaderand I think it's an ego thing
like I'm just doing this for youbecause it's so important that
people are happy and I'm a herofor that and instead it's really
if you're a capitalist, if youwant to be competitive you know
(04:48):
I'm a hero for that and insteadit's really if you're a
capitalist, if you want to becompetitive, if you want to have
a really you know, future readyorganization you invest in
well-being.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I love to hear you say that, because I think back
to the days where, whenwork-life balance was the thing
and people were like who needsthat?
Like it's a badge of honor tojust drive yourself into the
ground, but it's bad forbusiness, right?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It is bad for business and I wrote this
article for Harvard BusinessReview that I think it went
viral because people felt reallyconnected to this idea of toxic
productivity and the title waslet's End Toxic Productivity.
There is this heroic attitudetowards people that don't sleep
and they don't eat and theydon't even take time to go pee,
they just work all the time.
(05:31):
It's like they're the highperforming people and that's
just because they feel likethat's what they have to do to
be able to be promoted.
It's not anyone's real desire,but it's become something we
celebrate and we need to getbetter at.
Looking at rest is not a fourletter word that.
It is actually good for all ofus and it makes us more
productive and leads to lots ofgood business outcomes.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Listen, I am all for bringing back the afternoon nap.
Anyone a fan from kindergarten?
I feel like that was a goodrefresher, so let's build that
in.
You write that work isfundamentally broken.
How did we get here?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
This is a long time coming.
You know, the office is 550years old.
We have sort of behaved in thesame way, around that same
framework.
I mean we went from seven daysa week to six to five, so now
we're in the five zone, whichhas been the last hundred years.
But you know, nothing's reallychanged about work and going
(06:32):
into the office and it beingvery transactional.
But I say, since the advent ofthe car phone, where we were
able to move our work into thenew office which was our car,
that changed work from atransactional relationship to a
social contract.
You're asking us to bring workinto our home, into our personal
life.
You know that really breaks theexpectation, and so we've had
(06:57):
this unwinding of what ourexpectation of work has been and
also the demands on us to beworking all the time with all
these blurred lines.
And there was a point in thepandemic which crises do?
They exacerbate all thoseexisting problems that were
there, that were boiling andexploded them, and so in the
(07:18):
last five years it's like wewent from breaking to broken and
now we have to figure out a newframework for work.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well, throughout the book, you really explored why so
many of us are feelingunfulfilled at work.
Do you think this is a modernproblem, or is this something
we've always struggled with?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
When you look at Gallup's engagement data, it
sort of stayed the same.
We are at the worst level ofactive disengagement levels that
we've seen in a decade, so it'sextraordinarily bad now.
As far as how many people areactually happy at work, it
always really has stayed in that.
You know, globally around 13,15 percent and in the it's
(08:04):
30-ish Canada same thing, but sothere's really a huge swath of
the workforce that hasn't reallybeen happy at work.
But what I believe is that wehad a different expectation of
it before and we knew part of itwas going to be a grind and
there was generations that feltlike, okay, that's just part of
(08:24):
work is that it's not going toalways be enjoyable, and I'm
okay with that.
I have different expectationsfrom a different identity and
your identity about what you didwas more important than, say,
pay or work-life balance or someof those other things.
So our frame of reference inthe last five years has really
changed, and so things likeflexibility used to be a perk,
(08:45):
now it's a right.
We look at being able to not besick at work.
You know, like expecting not tobe burned out.
That has definitely become moreof an expectation, and yet
we're seeing higher levels ofburnout than we ever have, even
since peak pandemic.
And you know, we're asking moreof work and work is asking more
(09:06):
of us, and so I think we'rebecoming more disconnected.
Each group is being moredisconnected from the other,
like this data point that I hadin the book on the purpose gap.
You see, 85% of executivesreally do see and they feel
their purpose.
They say they live theirpurpose every day, whereas only
(09:26):
15% of frontline managers andemployees feel their purpose
every day.
We've lost the expectation ofwork and we have a new frame of
reference.
And also, when you're trustedwith something like everyone was
allowed to work remotely.
We did really well with that.
There was investments inwell-being, which was really
great.
There was investments in DEI,which felt really good.
(09:49):
Employees felt like, okay,here's the moment where we're
going to turn the corner andthere's going to be respect and
there's going to be anunderstanding of our needs,
there's going to be empathy andcompassion.
And then, five years later, andall of those things are being
clawed back, it feels like.
And then, five years later, andall of those things are being
(10:09):
clawed back, it feels like, oh,now I don't feel as much hope.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And so I think that's been catastrophic to levels of
engagement and happiness at work.
Why are we here?
It's such a well-researchedbook, it covers a ton of ground
and I'm wondering if you cantalk about the three key areas
leaders really need to approachdifferently.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Key areas leaders really need to approach
differently.
How I ended up really thinkingabout this book is that I really
do think it's a stacking kindof on, based on the first part,
which are foundations, and thenit's addressing the novel
challenges, because it's a wholenew framework.
We're in the multiverse of work.
We've skipped, you know,timeline.
We're not even the future ofwork, so that's sort of in this
business challenges that we haveto face.
(11:08):
And then the third part is yougreat data point a few days ago,
which was amazing, that showedthat the entire workforce is
(11:28):
pretty much feeling the same way, that leaders that have hope
are what they need right now.
But it's really hope, purposeand community.
So feeling a sense of matteringand feeling like you have
friends.
You know that work isn't justlike going to school without our
gym or recess.
There's actually like kibitzing, like you talk about, and fun
and joy.
And then there's novelchallenges that we need to deal
(11:51):
with.
I talk about, from a sense ofcompassion, freedom and openness
.
And compassion is really how doI take my empathy into, and
that act of listening into,action with AI, fear of becoming
obsolete, this sense of I hearyou but I'm not doing anything
about it, and this is why weneed compassion, you know.
Then we have freedom.
(12:11):
The idea of flexibility is sofocused on where, but how can we
maybe think about it for the60% of the non-remote enabled
workforce, why and with whom,and what we do and when we do it
?
There's lots of ways that wecan create flexibility for that
group, and just freedom is sucha fundamental part of who we are
(12:32):
, and when that strips away, wewill resist it to our death.
I mean, it is baked into us,and so the way that people are
tackling these return to officemandates are just terrible.
And then you know openness isgenerational divides.
We need to be listening to eachjust terrible.
And then you know openness isgenerational divides.
We need to be listening to eachother more and belonging and
recognition is really, how canwe have a shared vision if we
can't pull people together?
(12:52):
We're going to have just asiloed vision and that, no, we
know that doesn't work.
So it's about pulling peopletogether in a sense of belonging
for all of us to work bettertogether.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I think each of those stacks is so important, think
each of those stacks is soimportant and each of those
layers is so important.
And we're not going to gothrough all the stacks on this
episode, but we do want todouble click into a few of them
that just seem so critical andso anchoring.
And I want to talk about hopefirst because, I will be honest,
I read the Gallup research lastweek, read your book as well,
(13:23):
and I was thinking.
The first time I read I waslike we've grown up
professionally saying hope isnot a strategy in the book.
And now Gallup also validatesit.
It's actually scientificallyproven to be a strategy and you
can operationalize hope.
I'm curious about hope.
When we are wondering why weare here, hope is the answer.
Why is that?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And it's amazing because I spent some time and
you would have read the bookwhere I talked to senior leaders
in the military that say hopeis their only strategy, and they
say you know, think about it.
You're sending people out on amission that could risk their
lives and if they don't feelhopeful, they are not going to
even sign up for that.
(14:04):
Sign up for that or they're notgoing to be able to achieve
their mission because they don'tsee the point of it.
They don't see that there's apotential for them to hit that
goal.
It's too risky, and so youextrapolate that across any
organization.
That's the same way aboutasking people to risk when it
comes to ideas or innovation or,you know, being being
(14:24):
psychologically safe.
All of those things aredependent on people feeling like
that.
What they do is actually goingto come to some sort of fruition
, or it's going to be helpful,or they can see themselves in
the future of their organization.
You don't have hope.
(14:49):
You do not get anyone on boardwith AI, and this is why we see
one in two of the globalworkforce now saying they have
AI anxiety.
Hope is super fundamental and Iactually feel like it's the
economic tool that we need ifwe're really looking at solving
big policy problems.
We're talking about women, andthis whole fertility crisis is a
big conversation we're havingall the time, and so you see
(15:12):
countries putting in a wholebunch of money for women at work
four-day work week in Korea andthese types of things but when
you actually talk to women andfamilies that are talking about
why they're putting off havingchildren, they say I don't see a
world where I can bring a childinto it is heavy and it's not
financial incentives that weneed to give people now.
(15:36):
It's hope.
This is the economic driverthat we all need across
organizations, societally andglobally, and until we really
get to that upstream kind ofthinking about it, we're still
going to be in crisis in thenext 20 years.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I want to double click on this because we talk to
a lot of folks, especially atthe middle management level,
that are burnt out.
They feel like they've beenasked to do more.
Just like you said.
They're feeling thatdiscrepancy between feeling
purpose and being like whatpurpose you know.
And so when you say hope is thestrategy, and then we have
middle managers that are feelingjust how the hell am I supposed
(16:14):
to have hope?
What does hope look like for meas a middle manager?
How do I show up with hope whenI've got 55,000 things going on
?
How do you respond?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
to that.
So I love that you've asked methis, because hope is actually
one of the easiest skills thatwe can build, and so much of the
book is changing culture in 20minutes or less.
Like I've been saying, it'sjust these 20 minute meetings
here, these incremental shiftsover here.
It's not a big value change.
It's actually middle managersare the ones that are the most
(16:43):
empowered to make these changes.
And when you think about hope,it's really based on Snyder's
hope theory and this is whatI've talked about for many, many
years.
It's this idea of having goals.
So really focus in your teamaround setting goals and not
five-year goals.
But how do we set daily, weekly, monthly goals that lead up to
(17:04):
that year, that lead up to thatbig career pathing five years?
And then the second part ishaving pathways.
So you're planning your goals,but do you have a plan B?
Do you have a plan C?
Do you have a plan Z?
Having secondary and tertiaryplans around your goals makes
you feel like that one goal, ifI don't hit it this way, I have
(17:26):
all this other backup.
I've had all this otherplanning to hit that goal.
And then it's about agency.
We need autonomy in hittingthose goals.
Google does a great jobco-creating goals, talking with
peers.
Peers celebrate.
It's fluid, it's justchallenging enough that you feel
like you've accomplishedsomething, but not so
challenging that you could neveraccomplish it, and not too easy
(17:47):
that you feel like, oh well,that was easy.
So you don't feel that sense ofaccomplishment when you reach
it.
All of this builds up cognitivehope day to day.
And you know, lululemon isreally good I was their
happiness strategy strategistway back and they do a good job
of having these BHAGs, these big, hairy, audacious goals.
But then they also have theycelebrate the small wins.
(18:09):
So that weekly goal or themonthly goal, the manager can be
like, yeah, like sticker, youknow, like here's a gift card at
the end of you know youachieving this two month goal or
this quarterly goal, like theseare the things that we, we need
to help people do, becausesubconsciously it builds up our
hope capacity or cognitive hope,and the more hope we feel, the
(18:31):
more we feel like we canaccomplish bigger goals.
And then the more risk-takingwe are, the more innovative we
are, the more cohesive we arewith the rest of our team
because we're you know, we'reworking, we're gelling together
in a really helpful kind of wayit just breeds such a good
social contagion of hope acrossthe culture.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, I love that.
I know you've talked about itin some of your past books too.
But that idea of chunkingthings out for your folks and it
doesn't need to be the beehiveswe all love the beehives and
the moonshots and it's all sexy,sexy but sometimes it just
comes down to those small winsuntil you get the bigger wins
and chunking it for your folks.
Oh, I talk about purpose too,because we talked about hope and
then you pull up into purposeright, that's that second
(19:11):
element of that strongfoundation that you talk about
when it feels like your org ison the fourth reorg and you
actually don't know where thehell it's going.
But you're leading a team andyou're like, all right, here's
our purpose.
Like, how do you do that inthat 20 minute sprint?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
This is a really key, I think, when you ask me of,
like, what are the things thatwe get wrong about leadership
and culture?
Sorry, this is another placewhere we fall short a lot of,
and it's because of the purposegap.
A lot of the people in thatexecutive role feel very
connected to the big missionstatement.
They feel it like they're in it.
But most of the workforcedoesn't really care about the
(19:53):
big mission statement.
They're not thinking about thevision every day, they're really
in the work and sometimes thatwork can feel very monotonous,
really boring, and so you wantto stop trying to make it so far
away from people.
You want to tie the day-to-daywork into things that people
care about, and you do this inthis way.
(20:13):
That's very practical and I'vewatched this intervention and
tried it across organizationsand it's been incredible.
But it's 20 minutes of anon-work-related check-in where
you ask what lit you up, whatstressed you out and what can we
do for each other to make nextweek easier.
So the lighting up piecemanagers are able to kind of get
clues into what excites people.
(20:33):
You know, what do you careabout?
Does it really matter that yourkids are in a good school?
Do you care about watchingBroadway films.
You have a passion for going toNew York once a year and seeing
all the Broadway films.
I mean, these are things whereit should seem innocuous but
it's actually.
It's really great data.
This is where you're like how doI motivate people and connect
(20:55):
their day-to-day tasks to thatthing?
You know, and if and then whenyou look, you know at the stress
stressors.
People aren't going to say whatthey're stressed out about to
their boss in day, week one orweek two Absolutely not.
You're putting on the front.
You know it takes monthsactually, but that consistency
and frequency and managersshowing up every week saying I'm
(21:16):
still going to ask and I'mstill going to share my
stressors, that vulnerabilityand leadership opens up
psychological safety amongst theteam.
So people then start sharing,like what is going on, and if
you create an open space, peoplewill tell you this is what I
need, this is what's holding meback from connecting to my
purpose or doing what makes mefeel good every day.
(21:37):
And so over time, consistencyand frequency builds trust and
then you get to use this andthen the quick win piece is the
hope building.
So every single week you'rehelping each other cohesively in
this team building thing likehelping each other to solve
problems, and so work getseasier, gets more fun, it's less
(21:57):
toxic, it's also lessexhausting and you can help each
other.
You learn these small ways thatyou can tactically help each
other with workload and sooverall, you start to feel like
your work has more meaning, itmatters more.
You feel more aligned with yourmotivators and your purpose to
the day-to-day tasks and itchanges so much of how people
(22:20):
feel about their work and how itcontributes and makes an impact
.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I love that too, because at the end of the day
sometimes I think about if youdistill down what everybody just
really basically needs at ahuman level.
It's just to be seen.
Or for someone to be interested,genuinely, like what does light
you up?
Or what are you about, you andme together, human to human.
It's like simple, elegantquestioning that really helps
(22:47):
you, as a manager, understandand get the data to your point,
but also enable someone to feelseen.
We've all had leaders where wefelt that potentially, hopefully
you have, and you have hadleaders where they don't give a
shit.
You know what I'm saying.
They don't care.
Yeah, they don't care, andyou're kind of dying for them to
ask or just be interested, likedo you even know me?
I had a leader one time askingme how my kids are doing, after
(23:10):
I'd worked with them for fourmonths.
I have a kid, I don't have two,and it was you know.
It's like those moments whereit's like you're not even in
this.
This is so transactional foryou.
I love that on the one-on-one.
And the other thing I want toask about you talk about the
importance of friendships atwork.
Mel and I actually fun factwe're work friends and then we
(23:33):
started this podcast and so weknow the value of work
friendships.
But I'm wondering howorganizations can facilitate
community more like the idea ofthe true community.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
This has always been something that I've been so
interested in is this communitypiece, because going to work and
not having that person a person, just a single person there,
that's all you need.
But people that don't have that.
It's just a very miserableexperience for them and I wrote
about that in the burnoutepidemic like a toxic, unhappy
(24:02):
group of people that you workwith can actually reduce your
lifespan, like that's howdetrimental it is on your mental
health and well-being.
So you need to have that personor else work just does, just
feels really lonely.
And what's happened in the lastfive years?
And everyone wants to blame iton remote work.
But I don't think that that'sthe case and I've shared really
(24:23):
the data to say it's not remotework that has impacted
relationships.
We've been dealing withlowliness at work for a long
time but it's that we haveorganizations that just focus on
simplex relationships which aretransactional, like you said.
It's that I need you for this.
It's basically a sharedservices and that's how you
interact.
(24:43):
But organizations that reallyfocus on building multiplex
relationships where it's.
I know you and I know that youhave a kid, not two kids or
three kids, and I know that thisis where that non-work related
checking comes in handy becauseit's about developing more
robust relationships that createbonds.
(25:08):
Five years, especially withthese return to office mandates
when people go back into theoffice, it's not like they're
spending more time doing what weshould be doing, which is
collaborating and connectingwith each other and bringing
back rituals.
You know, I love that Atlassianhas the hackathon every quarter,
and there's companies that do areally good job of pulling
people together to do cool stuffand they build relationships.
We've lost a lot of investmentin team building and networking
(25:31):
and a lot of that social piece,that social binding, is gone,
and so right now, the way thatwe've developed friends would be
different than you and Mel,which would be organic.
It used to be like you'd walkin the office and maybe you were
friends with someone inmarketing, maybe you talked to
someone in accounting.
You'd have ways of havingconversations with lots of
(25:51):
different people.
We've continued to hear in thedata is that it's very siloed
now, so we only care about ourteam.
We don't know anything going onacross the rest of the
organization and the thing thatI used to look for which was
compatibility and you know ifyou made me laugh or we were
both interested in cool movies.
Now we're looking forconscientiousness and
(26:13):
accountability.
Those are the traits we'relooking for in our friendships,
which is very, it's very theones to go dancing on Friday
night with their accountable,conscientious friend Like no
line.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
So that didn't even accumulate with our country.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I guess that sounds fun.
That's it.
We're only looking to haverelationships at work that will
continue to foster better workand to me, like that is the
thing that we need to rework isbringing people back into spaces
where, like I was talking inthe book about the third space
making it like Starbucks, whereyou're going there to debate and
(26:54):
discuss and be connected andthen you go home or wherever, to
your own little world to do theheads down stuff.
But right now, going into workis just like a replica of
working from home and that's notbuilding any sort of friendship
or community that anyone reallycares about.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
It's interesting, though.
I mean companies could totallyreimagine those spaces to be
more communal or like office, asan amenity to foster that
organic relationship building orget back to it.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, and we're so time starved and we're so burned
out that our social tank isreally, you know, has been
depleted and so again, it's likehygiene.
We need to, we need to manageoverwork, we need to create
space for people to actuallyconnect.
You know, in the again, the 20minutes or less.
Cornell research in the booksaid 20 minutes of having lunch
(27:44):
with one person once a weekcompletely changed the dynamic
of organizations.
They found that morale wasimproved, job satisfaction
increased, people made lessmistakes, which I thought was
really interesting.
Their work performance improved.
And that was 20 minutes of justhaving lunch away from your
desk once a week.
It's super simple again, butthese are the things that create
(28:08):
incremental network effect,that we're all kind of doing
some of these pieces of thepuzzle.
Eventually the culture willflourish would be.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I would have the 20 minutes, the lunch away from my
desk more, but I would invitesomeone from an accounting or
the gallon marketing or whateverjust to network more earlier on
and just go to lunch withpeople more.
I wish I would have done that.
It's so nourishing.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
It's so special.
I worked in a big law firm whenI first started out in New York
and we did have that.
We had a lunch crew and theyhad a cafeteria, but everyone
knew everyone.
It was a mixture ofadministrative staff.
Paralegals, even like the lunchstaff crew, would come in and
eat with us and it was onemassive table.
There were 25 of us everysingle day.
(29:00):
That's what we looked forwardto and we talked about
everything but work and it justmade our week, but it made work
better.
And to this day, and it justmade our week, but it made work
better.
And to this day, even thoughthat firm's long gone they
merged with someone else, thebuilding's been taken over, but
there's a Facebook group ofalumni from that workplace down
from everyone to security, toall that crew, because that's
(29:20):
how close we were.
It was like a very specialenvironment which you don't see
anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Really, I love that, Mel.
I love that because in the bookI shared a case study of this
person I interviewed at a techcompany and he met with a lot of
his coworkers and people in thebuilding for lunch.
They were pulled back on aproject that ended up making
them having to work all theselong hours and slowly but surely
they abandoned their lunch andhe said that his team started
(29:47):
dropping out and moving tocompetitors, and even in the
exit interviews for me it justfelt like we stopped having
lunch, we stopped caring abouteach other.
It's more than that.
It's more to a lot of people,and he ended up after six years
being on a track to be in a highposition in that organization,
left to a competitor and heinitiated the lunches in the in
(30:09):
his other place and it becamethis whole popular thing again.
It's so much more than peoplerealize it's.
It's the pausing, it's theconnecting, it's the not talking
about work, it's developingthese depths of bonds that
sustain and and we're notinvesting in that anymore
because we're thinking 20minutes, oh well, that means I
have to leave 20 minutes late,I'm going to be stuck in traffic
(30:31):
.
It just means more work.
When I come home at night I'llbe in my pajamas working till
midnight.
When you're burned out, whenyou have that kind of toxic
productivity, you don't engagein 20 minute lunches.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Now, I also am a fan of in virtual environments,
because I do think you could dothis in a virtual environment,
like having a fun weekly debateon something random like is a
hot dog a sandwich?
Put it up on.
Teams for everyone tocontribute to the conversation,
right, like how do you getwhat's a weekly question?
But like, get creative, whatcan you do to engage everybody
across the org?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, Is pot fruit considered to be acceptable on a
pizza?
Yes, no, it is a good question.
Yeah, you have lots of debate,but I do think it needs to be
levity, you know, and about allof the new challenges, and boy
(31:46):
do we have them.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Ai, multi-generational workforce I
think we just read somethingrecently about Gen Z doesn't
even want what we have, sothere's a whole problem there.
The backlash on DEI, thebacklash on remote work,
extensive burnout as you writeabout.
Employee happiness is justcontinuing to drop.
When you think about all ofthese new challenges, what's the
(32:09):
one thing workplaces need tofocus on now to overcome the
competition against all of thesethings when they're trying to
create a good culture?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
One of the things I keep telling leaders that I work
with is why do you feel, like,five years into this complete
cataclysmic shift in work, thatyou're supposed to have it
figured out?
I mean, no one even knows whathybrid is Like.
Why is it two or three days aweek?
We don't even know.
Hybrid could be four times ayear.
Hybrid could mean lots ofdifferent things, and there is
(32:40):
this kind of ego, I think,around us needing to have this
thing sorted and wanting to justput the pandemic and now poly
crisis on some sort of backburner and not think about it.
And so I've been saying the onething that leaders need to do
is just let go of all of thatsort of that expectation and
(33:01):
recognize with self-awarenessthat we are in a completely
different mindset.
Behavioral, you know, thebehavioral mindset of this
workforce today is clearlydifferent.
The priorities have shifted.
We have Gen Zs that do see usas terrible models for what work
looks like.
You know most of us burning out, all of us resigning, saying we
(33:23):
hate work, we're not greatmodels, and so of course they're
going to say I don't want thatand they're going to find new
avenues.
We're losing our mature workers.
They're retiring early at apace that we've never seen
before, and they say I don'treally fit into this workforce,
it's changed.
So let's get on top of that andsay, okay, let's be agile,
(33:48):
let's iterate, let's test, let'ssee if this works and if it
doesn't, that's okay.
We're going to be just muchmore fluid in the way that we
build our strategies until wefeel like, over time, I feel
like we're in the pilot stage ofthis experiment that you know,
when you look at 550 years oldfor the office, we're looking at
a pretty long time before we'regoing to get any of this kind
(34:11):
of mapped out.
So for me it's about selfawareness, agility and pausing
and kind of coming up with a newplan.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah, well, it's also like will we really ever have
this all mapped out?
Or is this just start beingokay with the unknown and
working together to be like Idon't know either, and we'll
figure it out together?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I love that you say that, because even five-year
strategies right now, when wehave Gen AI and what's changed
we have to imagine that that'sgoing to be five years where the
things that we thought weregoing to happen have been
totally changed around, and sothat is really.
It is understanding that we'rein a state of uncertainty and
will be for quite some time now.
That's why, if you really wantto be successful, it is managing
through change and learning howto do that much better.
Unfortunately, we just see ademographic of CEOs.
Most of them are male, most ofthem are in their 60s, and it's
(35:12):
been very difficult.
We've seen just that liketrying to shift over into
especially what Gen Zs areasking for.
That feels so foreign, it feelsso far away from the way that
they were professionally raised.
So I have empathy for bothgroups, but we do need to
connect somewhere, becausehaving divisions, that and us
(35:35):
being that far apart in ourgoals, there's no way we can hit
those plans, that vision, if wedon't start talking to each
other.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yeah, if we can't find common ground, it is moving
to a danger zone.
I think last week Francesca andI were, we were covering new
week new headlines and we readsomething around how it was like
73 percent of Gen Z's that werepolled Don't quote me on this,
because I think it was somewherearound there where they were
mentioning they don't even wantthe job.
Like we're heading for amanager meltdown this year, in
(36:08):
fact, because they can't findcommon ground and what they see
is what they don't want.
But, as you mentioned, it'sdeeply affecting the future of
organizations and business.
So what are your thoughts onthat?
Like, how can we start to findcommon ground?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I say first across the organization.
Even managers can do this.
How often do you expressfrustration with an entire
generation and how often do wehave conversations like oh, I'm
so frustrated like my boomer, myXer, whatever bandager, usually
(36:45):
Xers are boomers.
Everyone's a boomer if they'reover the age of like 45.
So it's like how does my Xer.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I don't appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
That I do not appreciate being I don't like
being lumped in there but, I'mhere but to get everyone on to
say I'm a boomer, so it's likeanyone over a certain age.
It's kind of like thisexasperation.
And yet then we see this riseof youngism.
We've never seen it this harshbefore, where young people are
coming into the office and it'sbasically like they're already
defied as lazy.
(37:12):
And if they do ask for thingslike respectful hours so that
they can have friends, I meanthey're just trying to meet
people and develop relationshipsthat might be long lasting, so
they can have family and plantheir lives.
But if you're working 60 or 70hours a week, it's just not
appropriate for anything else inyour life.
(37:34):
The fact that they're askingfor this with this perception
that they're just lazy, it seemslike what they're asking for is
just so, gen Z, that putspeople off.
They're opting out of theworkforce.
Because of it.
They're willing to accept anextraordinarily less amount of
pay.
All the data showing it's up to37 percent less pay to have
(37:56):
work life balance.
So for them they're not likeXers and boomers were where it
was by the house get married,have kids, so you have all these
golden handcuffs tying you toyour job.
They're putting off buyinghomes later because of financial
the situation that they're in.
They just don't have that.
They're living longer withtheir parents, they're not
(38:16):
getting married, they're nothaving kids, so their ability to
be mobile and take less paymakes it so we're not holding
onto them, and with the samecarrot.
And that means having to beflexible.
And so I keep telling managersjust like audit your language,
audit the narratives that go onin your organization.
Try to remove those things thatreally do separate you.
(38:38):
Auditing your language reallychanges how you feel about
another group, and I should alsosay the youngest generation.
Their whole point is to pushback on the status quo, like
that's what you expect.
Every generation does that.
Why are we surprised that thisgeneration is pushing back on
the status quo, like that's whatyou expect.
Every generation does that.
Why are we surprised that thisgeneration is pushing back on
the status quo Like this istheir job, this is every
(39:00):
generation's job is to questionwhether the generation before
them have done the right job.
You know, societally andpolitically and economically,
and every generation's done that.
So here we have anothergeneration that's just coming in
to tell us we're doing a badjob.
That's the way it goes.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
I feel like Gen Z's role is actually to remind us
that we're all human beings inhere for a finite amount of time
, so maybe we should all stopprioritizing work as the number
one priority.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
I love it.
I say Gen Z's say well-being isnot antithetical to work ethic.
They say that loud and clearand I fully agree with that.
So it's probably why I havemaybe my bias to say let's
listen to Gen Zs because youknow, maybe they're pushing the
pendulum really far in onedirection, but that's the only
way that we're going to havechange, that sort of meets in
(39:52):
the middle.
So let's let them do that andthen figure out a way that sort
of marries all worlds.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Couldn't agree more.
Another big topic is AI, andyou talk about the fear of
becoming obsolete.
So how can leaders navigate allof what's happening in AI today
and really kind of squash theFOBO that's happening for their
teams?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
So I love the term FOBO.
I mean Gallup really strippedit with that one.
You know I love JOMO the joy ofmissing out.
That's one of my favorite.
Fobo is a good one too.
The data is showing that it'sreally increasing, and it's
increasing a lot for youngercohorts.
It used to be automation, somature workers were ones that
were most threat.
You saw that obsolescencereally coming out in that group.
(40:41):
But our younger generation arefeeling it, and a lot of that is
that we've got again likehyperbolic language.
We're in a mass extinctionevent I robot and everything's
going to fall apart, or it's 300million jobs are going to be
lost, or or then it'severything's rosy with AI.
Everything's going to be great.
You know we're going to,they're going to be our pilot
(41:02):
and you won't have to work again, and I don't like the idea of
people not wanting to work ornot working again.
A, that's an economiccatastrophe, because how are we
going to care for everyone notworking?
And B, just from a humanstandpoint, we get a lot of fuel
from work, and so what?
(41:22):
I have this LinkedIn course thatI basically took that chapter
of FOBO and brought that in tosay how do we create AI
enthusiasm instead of AI anxiety, because it's here and that's
the reality and so we need tonormalize it.
We need to talk about howubiquitous AI is in the rest of
our lives so it isn't so scary.
(41:43):
We need to make sure thatpeople feel skilled up and not
overlooking mature workers,because we're seeing that
they're getting constantlyoverlooked for training in AI.
It's kind of like both of themare giving up and yet pretty
robust research looked at matureworkers and said and there was
40% of them that said I wouldstay longer if I had this
(42:03):
continued training, if I feltlike you were training me up to
handle this, but I'm overlookedconstantly.
So there's things that we needto do around training and just
preparedness.
We also want to create curiouscultures.
Have a once a month meetingaround some new experimentation
that you had with AI.
You share it back with the team.
It can be personal orprofessional.
(42:25):
You can have some personal,some professional so you can
talk about oh, I did this trickand I used AI and now I've been
able to do my work faster.
It's been great.
So that's really important iscreate experimentation, and I
would say the most importantpart and this is probably at the
executive leadership level iswe need to deliver on the
promise of AI.
(42:45):
So the promise of AI was thatyou will have your mundane tasks
taken away and then you willhave really creative, cool work
that you get to do.
A lot of people that I'veinterviewed are saying I had the
mundane stuff taken away, butnow I have extreme boredom and
I'm not getting any of that.
So there's a promiseundelivered.
And then also Gen AI issupposed to save us time, so if
(43:09):
we're finished our project early, we should be given that time
back.
It shouldn't be that we're justadding more productivity when
it's supposed to createefficiencies.
So these are two things at thepolicy level that I think
executive leaders need to say.
Are we delivering on thepromise of AI in these two areas
?
And maybe it's changing the waywe measure productivity.
(43:30):
It's more around goals, nothours, and so that's at the GDP
level that we need to be lookingat that.
But just even in organizations,we can change policies to make
the promise of AI feel like it'sworth investing in for
employees.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
I'm wondering if most organizations even have mapped
out what the promise of AI wasto their employees, because
they're very focused onstakeholders shareholders but
not viewing their employees asstakeholders and or saying this
is what AI can do for you.
Like, I don't feel like a lotof organizations have explicitly
said that or put that in theirEBP as either it's a major
(44:09):
problem.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
A major problem.
The Microsoft Trends reportthat came out in collaboration
with LinkedIn found that 60% ofCEOs don't believe that there's
a strategy, and so this is whathappened, and there was this
really interesting report, too,that showed that technology
wasn't even on the radar of sortof business disruptions up
until the last two years, and itwent from not even being on the
top set of stressors that CEOswere feeling to sixth place and
(44:38):
then in a year to first place.
This last year was like firstplace biggest disruptors to
business, and so everyone'sreally just adopted AI.
Because I need to adopt AI, Ineed to show that I'm
competitive, but with no.
I need to show that I'mcompetitive but with no strategy
, and you need to know your whybefore you adopt AI.
Know your why before you adoptAI, so then you can then
(45:01):
communicate that, and that lendsto managers being able to
communicate the why.
I'm curious about whatorganizations or are there?
Speaker 1 (45:17):
organizations that are getting this right.
I'm curious about whatorganizations, or are there
organizations that are gettingthis right?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, there are.
There's just so much right nowthat I'm seeing that are, you
know, are making it difficultfor people to stay on track with
some of that investment.
I talked about Bain and Companyin the book.
I mean they're doing thingslike even just cold rooms for
women that have menopause, forexample.
(45:54):
It seems again so simple, likejust having spaces that you can
work in that are cooler.
But for me as a perimenopausal47-year-old, I had the worst
brain fog in writing this lastbook in the first six months and
I actually felt like I'm notsupposed to be a writer anymore.
The amount of questioning of mycapacity and my efficacy was
(46:16):
really wild.
And then it was going to mydoctor and she was able to just
say I think you're going throughperimenopause, and that was
such a weight lifted.
I really did feel like I wasnot good at my job anymore and I
think of women at this age peakcareer my job anymore, and I
(46:37):
think of women at this age peakcareer feeling ineffective.
And so there are organizationsthat are saying we can't have
that.
We need to do things that aremore responsible for women.
We still are seeing, which Ifeel is like these big declines
in keeping women in theworkforce.
We're at the thinnest executivepipeline that we've seen yet in
history.
For the first time in a decade,global CEOs of women have gone
(46:59):
down, and it was already like ashit number in the first place.
I think it was 11 and a halfpercent.
Now it's 10 and a half percentyeah, celebrating incremental
gains.
I'm very over that, and so Ithink work isn't working for
women.
We need diverse thinking.
We've demonstrated in AnitaWilliams Woolley's work at
Google that collectiveintelligence increases when you
(47:20):
have more female genderrepresentation on teams.
I want people to start lookingat this as this is a business
strategy, not a benevolentstrategy.
This is not to be benevolent.
I'm not being an ally, I'mbeing a capitalist when I in my
executive pipeline, and so themore we can look at it as a
business imperative versus abenevolence imperative, the more
(47:43):
we'll.
I think we'll put that into thestrategic priority set, and
right now it just it's a lotabout allyship and doing good
and not seeing diversity inrepresented in leadership is
actually being really good forbusiness, and the more that we
can change that narrative andtalk about it in that way, the
(48:04):
less it's something that can becut out, and I do think that,
and you would have read in thebook that I do think the way
we've done it so far hasn't beenreally successful.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
What I've always tried to reconcile is the data,
even though these programshaven't been around for that
long.
When you look at the history ofwork, I appreciate that, of how
powerful your ROI is oninclusion, belonging women in
(48:35):
leadership roles, diversity,happiness at work.
I mean all of the things thatyou're talking about.
Hope, purpose, right, the datais there, the return on
investment is there, harddollars, and you can make the
monetary case for all of thisand I'm wondering is it the
narrative around?
(48:55):
We need to start talking abouthard dollars on this all the
time, when we talk about thisstuff to sell it more.
What is this flip in thenarrative?
I can't figure it out you knowwhat.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
It's always going to be a bottom line issue and as we
start to see a deficit in ourtalents resources and this is
what I think Anita in the bookthat I love that she shared is
just like we're wasting thisincredible talent pool and no
one seems to really care thatit's slipping away.
(49:28):
And what I'm seeing is and Ithink it's actually, in a lot of
ways, maybe beneficial to womenis that women are saying I'm
seeing is and I think it'sactually, in a lot of ways,
maybe beneficial to women isthat women are saying I'm going
to start to build up my own IP,I'm going to start up my own
companies and, because they areso good at it, they're going to
create their own space andthey're going to start to
demonstrate that they don'treally need that other
(49:49):
infrastructure.
And we're going to create thiswhole economy of women leading
organizations and actuallyhaving patents and having
opportunities for other women,because women will hire more
women, because you hire like,and so, as that starts to break
ground, which we are seeing,we're seeing so many more women
move into part-time roles sothat they can work on some of
(50:10):
these other things.
We are seeing like IP for womenincrease.
We are seeing women opt out ofworkplaces that are not
inclusive and moving toorganizations that are, so
they're demonstrating with theirfeet, and so the more that
becomes something.
That is a bottom line issue,which might take a while to show
(50:31):
up maybe irrationallyoptimistic of me, but the data
feels like it supports it, thatthat's what's going to start to
happen and we're going to seethis very different shift in
this economy for women.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Well, it's funny, francesca and I just did a whole
thing.
I mean, women drive the globaleconomy.
We own almost all of thepurchasing power globally and a
recent article said if you, youknow, if the economy is running
well, you might want to start bythinking women today, and one
of the stats that recently cameout was, in 2023 alone, 49% of
(51:09):
small businesses for the firsttime, more women than men are
starting small businesses.
So I think, yeah, I mean, thestats are showing they're
leaving in droves becausethey're leaving places where
they're not considered.
They aren't.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
And policies like return to office are actually
extremely exclusive for women,and until we're solving the
second shift and making surethat unpaid labor is balanced
across both teams in the family,this is the only option for
women.
So those exclusive policieswomen are just like.
That's not what I want.
The core heart of the book isthat we faced our mortality as a
(51:44):
collective, and what happens tothe brain when you face your
mortality is you actually startto subconsciously reprioritize
things that are about legacyleaving.
It's more about what mattersyou know in the world, what
matters to you as a human being,and so for women it was.
They felt years of just havingto take care of their family,
(52:09):
protect them from such risk.
It was a very strong emotionalexperience for a lot of families
and women in particular, and sonow they're looking at it after
they face their finitude.
They're like this thing thatI'm doing, that's toxic, that
does not include me, that doesnot care about me.
I don't really see that assomething that in when a life is
(52:33):
short mentality that I canaccept anymore, and when you're
not faced with that, you reallydon't see that there is
something that's sort of likehappening very quickly.
You don't have the same urgencyon it, but that experience and
polycrisis has put urgency on usto leave legacies, put urgency
on us to do more with our lives,and so for the people that are
(52:56):
pro-social, for the people thatcare about the world and care
about these things, they'relooking at work as not something
that matters as much, butthey're still equally ambitious,
and that's the thing that'scool about women.
They're like how do I make workfit into my life instead of
trying to fit into work'sexpectation of me, and I think
that's like where it's going tobe really cool.
(53:17):
I have gone back a few times toRiyadh.
So Saudi Arabia has this realfocus on 2030 women empowerment
goals.
So I also think other countriesare going to go.
Ok, we always looked at thatcountry as being so far behind,
it wasn't progressive, andthey're putting this huge
investment in women right nowbecause they do understand it
(53:37):
from an economic standpoint Ifone of the things that Saudi
Arabia does understand is wealthand how to build wealth, and
they are just looking at womenas their builders of wealth
right now.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
All right, jennifer, we're going to move into a rapid
round.
This is not a pop quiz.
It's meant to be fun and to geta little more versatile.
To get to know you, we'll startwith the work question.
It's 2030.
What do you think work's goingto look like?
This is such a great question.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
It's going to look the same, but I do think that
we're going to see incrementaldifferences in a more pro-social
way.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Okay, finish this sentence.
For companies to build workcultures everyone wants.
Leaders need to model thebehavior.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Employees can't be what they can't see.
Leaders need to model thebehavior.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Next sentence Work should feel more like blank and
less like blank.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
More like fuel for you know your sense of
accomplishment.
Less like a grind Damn right.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Not it?
What music are you listening toright now?
Speaker 2 (55:07):
I'm super into Olivia Dean.
I don't know if you've heardher, but she's so good and she
has a song called Dive.
I would highly recommend it.
But she just became super wellknown because I guess she has a
song on the Bridget Jones newmovie, so people are learning
about her.
But she's great, okay.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
Is Dive one of your favorite songs from her, or do
you have a favorite that's likeon repeat?
Speaker 2 (55:34):
Well, Lola Young does the song Messy, which I really
like, and she does a version ofit which I love.
But Dive, yeah, there'ssomething about it that's sort
of catchy and lovely, but a lotof her songs are like that and I
really like Bakar B-A-K-A-R.
If you just want to have a goodvibes hang out in your car and
feel like kind of like movingyour shoulders, yeah, that's a
(55:57):
good one.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Got to get some jams for my Trader Joe's parking lot.
My bell Going on All right.
What are you reading?
Speaker 2 (56:04):
right now.
Oh, so I like almost solelyread fiction, which is hilarious
as a nonfiction writer.
But I'm reading Coco Meller'sbook.
I don't know if you have heardof her.
She's really good.
It's oh God I just blanked onthe book on the name it's
Frankenstein and oh God, I can'tremember.
But it's really such a funlittle book and she's got cool.
(56:30):
I don't know really cool waysof thinking about characters.
And I'm also reading James,which is this cool book that is.
So I read multiple books at thesame time and I'm always
reading.
I have a book with me, I carryit with me all the time, I read
constantly Like I'm a superreader.
And James is the idea of Reedtelling the story of Huck Finn
(56:53):
from Jim's point of view.
Speaker 3 (56:55):
How fun it's really so far.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
It's really neat.
So one sort of beachy reads andthen the other is like I got to
have some meat in my brain,okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
Who do you personally really admire?
Speaker 2 (57:10):
It's a really good question because there's lots of
people that I really do admire,but you know, I would say my
mom.
So my mom was the first nursepractitioner in all of Canada
and she's in the books, you knowand she didn't ever talk about
her stuff because she was anurse and a nurse practitioner
(57:33):
and so you kind of would comehome.
She had told me later on inlife that she would come home
and she had, like, had to dealwith really traumatic, awful
things, especially in a lot ofcar accidents in rural towns
where she lived.
And even when we moved, youknow, to Canada, like to Eastern
Canada, what happened was justlike this sense of, I don't know
(57:54):
, having to come home and be agood mom and also have to deal
with all this stuff.
And when she moved, she had togive up being a nurse
practitioner because there didnot exist in Ontario.
So she was like, ok, well thenI'll figure something else out.
She was very resilient, so sheended up teaching nursing at
McMaster University, which washuge, and then working in ICU at
(58:17):
McMaster University McMasterHospital, which one of like it's
a sick kids hospital, so theydo just great work and then she
decided that she wanted to stopnursing and started her own
manufacturing company and soldquilts and had like multiple
stores and a whole bunch ofsewers working for her as like
the final stage in her life.
(58:38):
And I just feel, like you know,as a person that we never
thought was the entrepreneur, Irealized she was and she just
didn't just do things like insmall ways, she just did things
in big ways, but she was soquiet about it and it wasn't
until later on that I went wow,like you have subconsciously
been my person that I've admired, that I've tried to mirror my
(59:02):
life after Okay, Last one what'sone piece of advice you want
everyone to have?
This has been hugely beneficialfor me, because I didn't learn
this until I burned out and it's.
You can have anything, noteverything, and it's always
about a series of choices and weconstantly want to have
(59:23):
everything and you can haveanything.
You just need to choose in yourpriority structure what matters
most and when.
You have that really figuredout in your priority structure
what matters most and when youhave that really figured out
that anything feels likeeverything.
Speaker 3 (59:40):
I love it, thank you, thanks for sharing with us.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Yeah, I love it.
So easy to talk to you.
Oh, it's pleasant.
You have fun.
Yes, it's great.
Speaker 3 (59:52):
This episode was produced, edited and all things
by us myself, mel Plett andFrancesca Rennery.
Our music is by Pink Zebra andif you loved this conversation
and you want to contribute yourthoughts with us, please do.
You can visit us atyourworkfriendscom, but you can
(01:00:12):
also join us over on LinkedIn.
We have a LinkedIn communitypage and we have the TikToks and
Instagrams.
So please join us in thesocials and if you like this and
you've benefited from thisepisode and you think someone
else can benefit from thisepisode, please rate and
subscribe.
We'd really appreciate it.
That helps keep us going.
(01:00:32):
Take care, friends.
Bye, friends.
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