Transforming Work with Sophie Wade

Sophie Wade is a work futurist and strategist, author and authority on the Future of Work, instructor on Gen Z, empathy, and Future of Work skills, and host of this show. Sophie discusses modern work—what it is, why and how it is different and human-centric. She explains how to adapt to be prepared for the ongoing changes around and ahead of us, accelerated by AI. Sophie sets the landscape, describes enterprise needs, and why employees are the focus for the future. She shares the core principles of modern work and why practicing empathy is key.     TAKEAWAYS   [00:45] Sophie wants to take stock of where we are and what’s ahead that we need to prepare for.   [01:27] Our environment is highly-digitalized and interconnected, generating fast-paced change.   [03:30] Artificial intelligence has become a top strategic priority for most businesses.   [04:19] Driven by technology, is your customer base changing, how you serve them, or how quickly you have to upgrade your products?   [04:49] To respond to marketplace demands, operations become more flexible and the nature of work evolves.   [05:52] The pandemic catalyzed us along a path we were already on.   [06:12] The impact of technology updates on employees needing frequently to upskill and reskill.   [07:07] Why enterprises need to create a skills inventory and be mapping every employee’s skills.   [07:28] Hierarchies have flattened for businesses to be more nimble.   [08:10] Non-linear careers must be planned and managed even when skills and roles are evolving.   [08:50] Internal talent marketplaces and cross organization relationships facilitate non-vertical career development.   [09:41] Why younger employees quit if they can’t easily move internally with their current employer.   [10:43] Jobs with high and low automation potential can be compared for skills matching to assess possible future transfers.   [11:53] How BCG consultants used GPT4 and completed more tasks faster and better!   [13:11] Why the Future of Work is tech-driven and talent-focused.   [13:54] Empathy is essential in modern work to ensure the emphasis is on people.   [14:38] Each business is different so there are principles of modern work to adapt appropriately.   [15:10] The core principles of modern work are: Learning, Intention, Flexibility, and Empathy.   [16:25] Why workers need to be creators.   [17:04] Thinking outside the box is critical and what the box symbolizes—before and now.   [17:45] A strong culture is essential, grounded by empathy and other timeless values.   [18:50] AI is likely to net out creating more jobs, but much will shift during the transition.   [19:10] What is the broader impact of encouraging your team to use of AI?   [20:11] Empathy can help us focus on progress rather than more debates about work locations.   [20:52] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To start the transition to modern work, be curious and open-minded. Ask coworkers for ideas and recommendations and explore new possibilities. Curiosity primes you for learning, being flexible, and empathy about other’s viewpoints.   [21:27] Modern work IS different—adjusting for our new environment as well as enterprise and employee needs.   [22:17] The process of transformation is messy, but there are great benefits all round when we create and co-create together.     RESOURCES   Sophie Wade on LinkedIn   Sophie’s personal/speaker website   Sophie company Flexcel Network’s website     QUOTES   “These change that are upon us has been building in momentum for years already and causing strain within our fixed internal structures.”   “We have been transitioning for years already to modern work which is about flexibility—accommodating activities that are less linear, less routine, with more collaborative and cross disciplinary.”   “Numerous rigid layers of hierarchy have intentionally been reduced significantly in many cases to enable businesses to be more nimble and responsive.”   “Stronger relationships are critical to develop deliberately across organizations to permit non vertical career development, so that managers are willing to share one of their rising stars to another team or division.”   “For now, it is easier for employees to quit to advance their careers than move within their own organization.”   “The Future of Work is tech-driven and talent focused.”   “Empathy is essential in modern work—giving us each ability to understand other’s perspectives and connect with their experiences.”   “Everyone providing value to your business across your entire workforce needs to be a “creator”.”

Joe O’Connor is the Director and Co-founder of the world's first Center of Excellence in Work Time Reduction. Joe brings his previous experience as CEO and global pilot program manager of 4 Day Week Global, where he led the design and implementation of four-day week trials all over the world. Joe explains the intention and process of reduced-hour, productivity-focused new work routines and shares data, insights, and predictions having supported over 200 employers and 10,000 employees make the transition.     TAKEAWAYS   [03:00] After studying accounting, Joe does a master’s in strategy and innovation management.   [03:57] Leading a work-related research project within the Irish Public Service, Joe makes a surprising discovery that working parents can achieve the same results in less time.   [05:16] Applying Parkinson’s law in reverse, what might be possible? Joe wonders.   [06:57] Competitiveness, productivity, and hours worked—how the US and Europe actually compare!   [07:27] The short workweek is public sector driven in Europe and by private sector experimentation in the US and Canada.   [08:33] The private sector catches up where the initial impetus comes from government, eg Iceland.   [09:08] Technology advances previously reduced worktime, but that hasn’t happened recently in the US and the UK.   [10:00] What the 4-day week really means in Iceland and elsewhere.   [11:27] The central premise of the 4-day week and associated commitment.   [12:14] The different variations that companies adapt for their specific business and workforce.   [13:11] Worldwide, companies’ interest in experimenting with reduced work time skyrockets with the start of the pandemic.   [14:46] Infrastructure needs to be developed to support the number and variety of organizations trialing the 4-day week.   [16:20] Why we should focus on the process of HOW to adhere to the 4-day week.   [17:08] How participants’ habits change and what potential is unlocked.   [18:03] Inefficiency and optimization lie in “off system” tasks that aren’t designed or documented.   [18:56] Why operational excellence must be at the core of a trial project.   [21:01] The diagnostic phase answers: readiness, constraints and challenges, and optimal structure/model.   [22:17] The corporate culture—and related mindset—affects a pilot project’s progress.   [23:27] Companies most likely to succeed have cultures that elevate trust, autonomy, and experimentation.   [25:49] Key hurdles to overcome: resetting boundaries and expectation and aligned resource management.   [27:22] Clients are part of projects too—benefiting from transparent communication.   [28:53] Three implementation variations relate to (a) pre-work, (b) a graduated rollout, (c) client interaction.   [30:21] Recognizing and adjusting for interdependencies is critical—requiring flexibility for employees.   [31:23] Understanding trade-offs and hand-offs.   [32:19] The 4-day week is not about eliminating discretionary effort or flexibility.   [33:04] Framing the intention: redesign and bite-size rather than intensify and speed up.   [33:50] The essence is to eliminate wasted efficiency and unlock potential, incentivizing psychological behavioral benefits.   [35:25] Some leaders ‘just do it’ and—rather chaotically—make it work!   [36:10] The high success rate results from organizations self-selecting.   [36:41] A few companies dropped out usually caused by some other unexpected significant change.   [37:20] Most organizations can make the 4-day week work with clear benefits for attraction and retention.   [38:18] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To propose a four-day week trial at your company, pitch a feasibility study to build the business case, recognizing the conditionality of a trial based on hitting targets and offering nascent thinking about what could be done differently.     RESOURCES   Joe O’Connor on LinkedIn Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence on LinkedIn Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence website     QUOTES   “There is not a linear relationship between hours worked and productivity.”   “The idea that advances in productivity and technology can be shared in the form of reduced work time has been an age-old reality.”   “On one side there's a commitment to a genuine reduction in hours for the same salary, and on the other side there's a commitment to maintaining output which in itself assumes some form of increase in terms of hourly productivity.”   “I think part of the reason why some leaders and some organizations are resistant to this idea is because of how it gets interpreted in the media. It's very outcome driven rather than process driven. It's focused on the results rather than how organizations did it.”   “I think one other misunderstanding about the shorter work week is that it is a very rigid model. Actually this is not about eliminating flexibility. This is not about eliminating discretionary effort.”   “If you've got a top down command and control style leadership this is probably not going to work. It relies on a very bottom up approach where there's a partnership between employees, managers, and leaders.”

Francis “Fran” Saele is Managing Principal at Mortevita which provides specialty consulting on the new knowledge workplace and corporate real estate. Fran has deep experience in the corporate real estate sector. He shares his insights and views about the history, dynamics, and future of office infrastructure and the evolving impact on Central Business Districts. Fran is passionate about new ways of working and the workplace transformation that supports it—developing the infrastructure of distributed work. He discusses workplace flexibility and the timing for making decisions and moving forward.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   [03:27] Fran starts studying psychiatry but moves to psychology after challenging lab sessions!   [05:03] Fran is tasked with finding a purpose for a newly built building with a lot of empty space and catches the development bug.   [06:37] The difference aspects of real estate and development work.   [08:11] Speculative development requires incorporating flexibility to allow adjustments for prospective landlords' and tenants' needs.   [09:56] Market needs differ, but similarities remain regarding office spaces.   [11:00] In the decade before the pandemic, large businesses' trend to centralize operations generated Central Business District (CBD) clusters.    [12:40] To compete for talent, Fran had already developed remote working capabilities for his team before 2020.   [15:00] The mechanisms that enabled quick adaptations to remote work.   [17:44] Why there are 'Return To Office' mandates and why the push is a mistake.   [20:30] How organizations are thinking about mitigating reduced office usage.   [25:11] Can the shock to the corporate real estate sector trigger a recession?   [27:11] How can we reuse of office spaces: Condos? Vertical farming?   [30:21] Smucker’s workplace flexibility model developed after discussion with employees.   [33:44] Hybrid isn’t meant as a permanent solution. Working out compromises will require “Smucker’s” type moments.   [36:10] The tension surrounding 'Return To Office' mandates have yet to result in mass action by employers.   [40:14] The role the public sector has to play in reinventing business areas.   [42:41] Fran explains the future of the office within the community, including the evolution of malls.   [46:30] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To discover the right work model for your company, do a meaningful diagnostic to find out what your company needs to be and wants to be in the future and how best to get there. Identify management bias first, then talk to employees and understand what makes sense from their perspective. Then decide how best to redesign to achieve more progressive workplace operations, which drive real estate decisions.   RESOURCES   Fran Saele on LinkedIn fran.saele@mortevita.com     QUOTES (edited)   “There's a natural instinct in everyone to return to a homeostatic state—a state that worked well for you. Hence the ‘Return To Office’.”   “If you talk to anybody in a real estate organization: service providers, brokers, owners, or lenders, they recognized that any material change to how work was done was going to be a threat to their investments, their loans, and their economic future.”   “There are billions of dollars of existing financing on thousands of buildings across the country that will come up for refinancing. How much is that going to affect the non-real estate sector, and does it have the potential to drive the economy into a very deep recession?”   “Hybrid was never really intended to be a final solution. It was a compromise solution that allowed employees to have some time away and management to have people back in the office.”   “I think organizations need to be careful about being too pushy on ‘Return To Office’. A matter like this is likely to lead to some type of labor action, some attempts to move in the direction of unions.”   “They’ve got to figure out what to do with the buildings. If they don't, if there is no mission at all — and this will be true for a lot of B, C, and D quality buildings around the country — they’re going to at some point demolish them because there will be no uses that make any sense.”   “The infrastructure of distributed work is going to happen, it’s just going to take time. Getting rid of the large investment in CBD office is going to take time.”

Paula Allen, Global Leader and SVP of Research and Client Insights at Telus Health, brings her career-long expertise spanning health and productivity management, workplace and mental health, and total well-being strategies for the workplace. Paula shares her insights about how increased uncertainty and overwhelm in a fast-changing world affect workers. She explains why investing in a strong culture and relationships at work, and well-being initiatives which focus on empathy and recovery, are key to achieving and sustaining a healthy workforce and business outcomes.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [03:03] Images of stress-related structural brain changes cause Paula to study neuropsychology.   [06:00] Paula is appalled witnessing how adults with mental health issues are treated in the workplace.   [06:32] The CEO asks if Paula wants to change the situation—she says “Yes!”.   [07:17] Paula boldly calls a prior CEO at her company after hearing him talk about providers’ failings.   [08:14] They had the opportunity to redesign the system from the beginning so people struggling would get what they needed.   [09:30] With an empathy-based approach for physical health, they achieve better outcomes.   [10:30] With access to research, Paula hones in on the drivers behind different workplace behaviors.   [12:27] Focusing on and sharing expectations of recovery are beneficial all round.   [13:30] They discover a correlation between the decrease in middle management and increase in mental illness.    [14:30] Most supervisors know something is “off” early on, but they just don’t know what to do.   [16:45] A manager’s core job is to ensure teams are productive but that only happens when people are feel safe and get training.   [18:20] We have had a reset relating to mental health since the pandemic.   [18:58] Because people derive part of their identity from their work, fostering a healthy environment is critical.   [20:35] A few reasons why employees in need are not using their employer’s benefits.   [22:32] Stigma comes from lack of knowledge; Paula shares an interesting way to reframe how we treat people who are struggling.   [24:36] Occupational health is also mental health. Paula notes her predictions with the coming change of pace with AI.   [28:17] Paula talks about the recent organization-led innovations in the mental health space and shares some interesting demographic data.   [31:12] The very real increase in stress younger generations is having to live with and how to face it.   [33:08] Paula touches on the increasing pace of change and its negative impacts on human mental health — and what to do about it.   [36:23] Paula shares an interesting research parallel between the management of dementia and overwhelm.   [38:18] The Stockdale paradox.   [40:30] Paula discusses the types of support benefits that exist today and the ones that would be ideal for flexible, distributed workforces.   [44:41] The solution to mental health in the workplace is multi-layered.   [46:26] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Our best source of resilience is our relationships with other people. Social support is the core of everything to feel a sense of belonging in some group. So if you are feeling off, reach out and talk to someone — you don’t have to talk about what the issue is. Just be connected. On the other side let people in your life understand that they’re important and keep connected to them.     RESOURCES   Paula Allen on LinkedIn Telus.com Telus’ Mental Health Index Telus Mental Health Index July 2023     QUOTES (edited)   “Giving people what they need allows the clinical work to come to fruition.”   “When you look at drivers of productivity, of absence, of turnover, of innovation, of collaboration, of really strong workplace culture, you end up coming back to mental health and well-being.”   “A manager’s job is to help make sure that their teams are productive. People are not going to be productive if they don’t feel safe. We’re not training managers to be counselors, clinicians, or psychologists! We’re training them to create healthy workplaces that are productive.”   “If your people aren’t in a good place, you’re not going to be in a good place as an organization. The pandemic made this pretty clear.”   “Make sure that people do not feel alone, that they feel connected to your workplace. Have team meetings that are small enough that people can’t be on a screen with the camera off. If your employee is feeling isolated in your workplace relationship, you are going to pay for it and they are going to suffer.”  

Dan Mapes is the Founder and President of Verses.AI, an advanced artificial general intelligence and spatial web company, and Founder and Director of the Spatial Web Foundation enabling the 3D Internet. He also co-authored the best-selling book, The Spatial Web. Dan explains what globally networked artificial general intelligence can do now, what will become possible soon—especially with AI-run operations—and his vision of our AI-empowered planet in 2100. Dan discusses augmented working capacities, our ongoing caterpiller-like metamorphosis, and how we can all benefit by learning about and leaning into our growing capabilities. KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:37] Working on his PhD in AI at Berkeley, Dan clearly sees the ultimate goal of creating software that rewrites itself.   [03:36] ChatGPT is a machine rather than a self-evolving system which can learn from its mistakes.   [05:02] The ultimate software interface would be a 3-dimensional environment.   [06:04] Dan creates a lab to do R&D and work across sectors to solve intractable computer problems.   [07:14] The role of game theory in our lives and when developing artificial intelligence.   [08:23] Dan’s lab develops: databases that handle game objects, early capabilities to move images over a network, digital humans.   [10:18] How biological design using an action perception modeling cycle is a game changer in a co-evolutionary process.   [14:16] There are two classes of AI now—(1) content creation (neural nets) and (2) operations.   [16:28] We are at a new inflection point—leaving the industrial age and entering an intelligent globally networked age.   [17:40] Dan shares a practical use case—his company won an EU contract to manage drones in flight.   [20:40] The new AI enabled a universal language of AI – Hyper Space Modeling Language HSML.   [22:46] Dan describes what sharing a co-evolutionary brain worldwide means with collective intelligence rising.   [27:13] How the internet developed into the World Wide Web.   [29:12] The internet was always going to evolve into the Spatial Web once bandwidth increased enough.   [30:43] What the Internet of Everything will look and feel like as the 3D Spatial Web.   [33:25] The worldwide web’s three big flaws are being fixed by identity, security, and location layers.   [37:04] How everyone having self-sovereign identity improves privacy with zero knowledge proofs.   [39:16] The data exchange built into the Spatial Web allows each person to trade their personal data, if desired.   [40:12] Shopping will be a very different experience with AI-enabled mass personalization.   [41:43] The worldwide web aas a prototype—a useful 25-year experiment preparing us for what’s next.   [43:24] Dan anticipates a shift of similar magnitude to when we transitioned to the Industrial Age.   [45:24] When the network IS the economy, workers are location independent nodes on the network.   [46:43] We are transitioning to a planetary civilization, thinking about key problems at a planet level.   [48:50] Transforming education outcomes when AI can assess capabilities and personalize learning.   [51:34] The caterpillar, the butterfly, and the metamorphosis we are currently cocooning through.   [56:20 Dan’s vision of abundance moving beyond the Industrial Age and cooperating at global scale.   [57:09] Understanding the historical and potential trajectory of planetary wealth.   [58:59] What might be possible combining AI and quantum computing?!   [1:00:44] Evolutionary force is driving new developments—such as creating a digital neocortex to augment the human neocortex.   [1:03:57] Earth is an evolutionary planet.   [1:05:40] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To prepare and start adapting for an AI-powered future — learn more, educate more — read whitepapers, watch relevant videos and interviews — and come from a fundamental position of trust; trust with care. Feel positive about what we are evolving toward while paying attention to possible misuses.     RESOURCES   Dan Mapes on LinkedIn Verses.ai spatialwebfoundation.org     QUOTES (edited)   “We want what humans are. We don’t download better brains, we learn every day, evolving an interior model of reality. A baby has a small model, a child has a larger model, and an adult has a sophisticated model, so they can make better decisions. So the same thing with software. That’s been the dream of AI for a long time.”   “We are on the cusp of a new civilization that can do things we couldn’t do during the Industrial Age. It looks like another inflection point. We left the Ag (Agricultural) Age and entered the Industrial Age. Now we're leaving the Industrial Age and entering an Intelligent Global Network Age. And we’re the only company in the world doing this.”   “The whole era from 1970 to today is 5% of what the Spatial Web is going to do. Instead of connecting every machine or every document to each other, it's going to connect every building in the world, every car, every boat, every train, every plane, everything. It’s the Internet of Everything.”   “The Spatial Web knows exactly where everything is and the AI functions as its own immune system. It knows where things are. If there’s a bad actor, people report it and the ISP takes it down.”   “I’m a free person and I don’t have to report who I am to everybody. Having self-sovereign identity unlocks a really interesting concept called zero-knowledge proofs.”   “You own your data in the Spatial Web. You have an identity. You’re not being surveilled and sold, so you can sell your data. We built data exchange into the spatial web and we’ll buy from you and sell it for you to the advertisers. But you can choose.”   “The last time we went through such a major shift was when we left the farm and moved to the cities and people had to quit farming. It used to take 80 people to run a farm and once you had mechanization of the farm, it was eight people. So, we say “Oh my God! We’re losing our jobs!” No, no! You move to the city and learn to make tractors.”   “We’re moving toward a planetary civilization. Our climate problems are planet-level, our weapons proliferation problems are planet-level, we think at planet-level. We’re waking up.”   “An average working person [today] at median level income lives better than the King of England did 100, 200 hundred years ago. The king would trade immediately! If you got sick 200 years ago, you’re probably dead. That means that the average person in 2100 may be wealthier than the wealthiest person is today.”   “The caterpillar butterfly model is such a valid model because you could never predict the butterfly from the caterpillar. It’s a little fat worm crawling around on a stick, and then this thing comes out flying for 5,000 miles and has some kind of intrinsic knowledge of where it’s going. So we probably have intrinsic knowledge of where we’re going. The DNA of what we’re about to become is already within us.”   “A turtle will lay eggs on the beach and the little baby turtles will crawl to the water when they hatch, and then they’ll swim for two years in the open ocean, come back to the exact beach where they were born, and lay their eggs. I mean, that is machine intelligence, maximum.”

Chase Warrington is Head of Remote at Doist, a LinkedIn Top Voice on Remote Work, Global Top 20 Future of Work Influencer, Future of Work advisor, and host of the About Abroad podcast. Chase discusses his more than 15 years of remote team leadership. He shares insights, strategies, and tactics to elevate culture and connection—with a strong in-person strategy—across a fully distributed company. Chase explains how they select and onboard people effectively and teach employees how to work well asynchronously with a foundation of a culture of documentation.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:40] Chase has moved to Crete for a few months for a new work/life environment and experience.   [03:27] At college, Chase’s international studies pair him with students in Shanghai to work on a project.   [04:34] Chase enjoys an internship experience working in media in China.   [05:10] Learning a different language, with different expectations around work, and a foreign culture.   [07:14] How Chase figured out working in a cubicle was not for him.   [07:56] How Chase’s mother turned her nursing career into a remote job working 4 days a week in 1999!   [09:02] Chase starts looking for jobs that will allow him not to be office-based.   [10:14] Negotiating with a prospective employer to be on the one team that works remotely.   [11:34] Learning early how to work asynchronously.   [12:42] Experiencing firsthand, the disadvantage of being remote from a great office culture.   [14:54] Chase takes a gap year with his wife, traveling and working.   [16:16] Missing being part of a team, Chase looks for a rare fully-remote non-engineer job.   [17:52] Chase joins Doist heading up their international marketing team.   [18:58] How to make Doist a company synonymous with remote work—part of the wave of the future.   [19:59] After the pandemic hits, how can they stay at the forefront of the remote evolution to help build the Future of Work?   [22:30] Doist finds most people in N. America and Europe work in similar ways, resulting in an inward focus developing new products.   [24:51] Chase focuses on culture and connection to improve Doist’s already high remote working standards.   [26:01] Chase does internal and external research to figure out how to build more meaningful connections.   [27:28] With a culture of strong documentation, they rethink their central source of truth approach.   [29:32] Chase restructures and formalizes the focus on culture and connection—their IRL Strategy.   [31:19] How Doist employees work hyper asynchronously!   [32:25] How to connect people socially who work very asynchronously.   [33:47] The purposeful way Doist handles onboarding—in-person and online.   [34:40] New hires are assigned a mentor for six months.   [35:58] Doist tries to schedule two synchronous activities a month and two whole company trips a year.   [37:38] The people that come to asynchronous companies, and those who leave them.   [39:38] The role of local communities in supporting remote working employees.   [42:41] Changing the way we work is not easy, Chase encourages leaders to think about if they are building for yesterday, today, or tomorrow.   [44:42] A strong in-person strategy—including offsites and retreats—is key to building strong remote companies.   [46:58] On About Abroad, Chase’s podcast.   [49:05] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: The ultimate goal is for asynchronous work to be the default. Put a stake in the sand for what percentage of asynchronous work you are committing to. Then start optimizing the way your company works. Question every single work-related activity to see if it fits the async or synchronous model better. Create a culture of documentation and meetings become the last resort, not the first.     RESOURCES   Chase Warrington on LinkedIn Doist.com About Abroad Podcast aboutabroad.com     QUOTES (edited)   “This proximity bias is something that just happens even in the best, well-intentioned companies.”   “There’s plenty of data to back up the fact that while all these CEOs are worried about remote workers not working, they should probably be more worried about burnout and overwork than they should people not showing up to work.”   “Nobody reports having, on average, more than five hours of meetings per week!”   “We urge people to get out to disconnect from work. You don’t get rewarded for working long hours or being the first or the last one online. We want people to show up fully and disconnect completely.”   “We fund people! If you need a co-working space, it’s covered. Gym membership? Covered. Activities outside? Learning and education and social groups? Covered.”   “There’s plenty of research out there from unbiased resources that show that while we’re seeing a dip in work-from-home days compared to in the middle of the pandemic, we’re still five, six, seven times where we were pre-pandemic.”   “There’s this whole mentality that remote first means remote only, but everybody that has been in this space for a while believes that not to be the case.”   “Incorporating a really strong in-person strategy is becoming a core element of doing remote really well.”  

Lata Hamilton is a change leadership expert, change management consultant, and creator of the "Leading Successful Change" program. Lata has worked with some of Australia’s largest companies on operating model changes, global cultural transformations, and digital transformations. She shares her insights about leading people to achieve long-lasting change, especially paying attention to offline process elements. She discusses learnings from pandemic pivots, change leaders’ examples, and a winning top-down/bottom-up combined approach. Lata describes the emphasis shifting from tasks and roles to skills and expertise contributing value to deliver results.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [03:12] Lata starts her career in advertising to explore her creative side.   [05:35] Lata assesses the career model looking for balance—fulfilling work and being well-compensated.   [06:52] A graduate program offers many growth opportunities.   [07:52] Lata is ambitious, wants variety, and to make an impact.   [08:35] How pay should match professional growth and upskilling.   [09:48] Lata moves sector using her transferable skills.   [10:37] Process work becomes Lata’s focus.   [11:32] Lata leaves a graduate role having documented all the team processes.   [12:27] In financial services, Lata develops compliance and process skills and discovers project management.   [14:14] A colleague suggests change management after reviewing Lata’s range of skills and experience.   [16:00] What hadn’t Lata mentioned that is critical for change management work?   [17:48] The employee experience drives a great customer experience.   [18:39] How they pivoted at a major retailer when the pandemic hit.   [21:33] The deep caring Lata observed from people working on the frontline.   [22:34] How the change team led by example to demonstrate new ways of working.   [23:46] Affecting change, the critical work is off the system—offline process elements such as culture.   [25:33] During the pandemic, having had no preparation there was much remediation and helping to transition and cope after the fact.   [28:30] Change can be painful, taking much commitment and energy.   [29:16] Lata shares what can go wrong for companies not preparing for the future.   [31:08] Lata sees an explosion of AI automation and workforce transformation.   [31:22] Many organizations are recognizing they have low change management capabilities.   [32:58] Lata’s prediction that people’s roles will matter less than who they are, their skills and expertise used to deliver value and results rapidly.   [33:57] How “Business As Usual” roles and job descriptions need to be rethought and employees empowered.   [35:52] Lata questions leaders’ productivity baseline and metrics used to support Return To Office mandates.   [37:15] How should we be measuring success?   [38:54] Leading indicators for profit are a reflection of the employee experience.   [40:18] Why track sentiment and how confidence—determining how people show up—can bridge gaps.   [42:22] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To affect lasting change, lead from the top and model the change, and also open it up, co-create, and co-design with your teams. Invite them to provide feedback, give them tools, and teach them how to think critically and flexibly, building their capabilities to accept change in their personal and professional lives.   [45:30] – How a hackathon co-creates a new operating model and gets people committed to the future state.   [47:00] The multiple benefits of tapping into people’s desire to pass on their skills and knowledge.     RESOURCES   Lata Hamilton on LinkedIn Visit: www.latahamilton.com Leading Successful Change course     QUOTES (edited)   “Change management is really a focus on people in order to reach a result.”   “It’s not fluffy. We help people move from doing things in one way to doing things in a new way. We do it through communications, training, and business readiness. We do it to realize business benefit that is actually successful, sustained, and embedded into the future.”   “There is this big trend to build change capability. There’s also a trend around right-sizing teams and looking at how are we operating: ‘What do we need for the future?’ We are going is going require workforces that are more empowered.”   “From a workplace relations and employment relations perspective, we’re still stuck in the industrial era.”   “When people feel like they get communicated to, they are confident in what they are doing or the change that’s coming down the line.”   “If I am feeling really confident then I’m willing to be flexible and to adjust my approach.”   “I know I’m gonna be leaving a role, so I’ve always just wanted to come in, share as much as I can, and deliver as much value as I can. I want to leave the team better than what I started with. And I want to leave them with skills, tools, and capabilities to carry on this great work after I’ve gone.”   “When you co-create job descriptions you’re suddenly doing two things. You’re getting people committed to the future state. But what you’re also doing is you’re helping people to write themselves into roles.”  

Gary A. Bolles is Chair for the Future of Work at Singularity University, co-founder of eParachute.com, and Author of “The Next Rules of Work: The Mindset, Skillset and Toolset to Lead Your Organization through Uncertainty”. After a first interview in April 2020, Gary returns to the show to report on how he sees the Future of Work progressing and our ongoing adjustments for it. He shares insights about important work trends, mindsets, behaviors, and balance. Gary describes how concurrent waves of old work rules, transitional models, and the next rules of work are impacting leaders and our multigenerational workforce with its shifting weighting of employees and non-employees.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:20] Revisiting our first podcast discussion at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Gary recalls his article about the Great Reset.   [03:54] The helpful visual of multiple waves to understand the evolution of work.   [05:10] Some leaders have bungeed back to old rules of work while others have embraced new rules and operating systems.   [07:02] The effect of perceived incentives and disincentives on changing habits and rules.   [08:05] How to benefit from pandemic learnings and accept the messiness of adapting new practices.   [10:50] Zooming out to shift your mindset about how to solve problems across your ecosystem.   [11:36] Imagining leading without ego and with trust in order to alter leaders’ approaches.   [14:53] How media’s mischaracterizations don’t help as three waves of work try to co-exist.   [15:32] The inevitable trend of continuous co-creation which young people especially seem to embrace.   [16:30] The power dynamic had tilted towards employers which flexible work is rebalancing to some degree.   [18:29] Picture ourselves as icebergs. We employ entire people, not just the tip of the iceberg which we recruit.   [19:32] In the new era of work, leaders are responsible for workers, their lives, and communities.   [21:43] Sophie anticipates smaller core employee groups and more non-employee workers in future.   [22:50] Future employee “agency” achieved through a “worknet” - a flexible flow of talent with varying degrees of organization membership.     [24:05] How to help increase degrees of membership in your company, enable people to feel connected, co-create effectively, and be rewarded.   [25:00] Cybersecurity provides a similar framework for the worknet model.   [27:00] Using words and concepts that reflect people’s sentiments and realities helps us reach balanced understanding and outcomes.   [29:10] Aren’t young employees manifesting the Future of Work rather than disrupting work norms?   [30:15] How young people are responding to new market signals as new work practices endure.   [32:09] Why older leaders are bereft at Gen Z’s behaviors and miss the opportunity of co-creation.   [33:23] Why aren’t younger employees’ deciding their careers now, and other related outcomes?   [34:45] How the precarity of the world is driving youth to hedge their bets with a portfolio strategy.   [35:32] Looking at the three stages of life horizontally not vertically (sequentially) as proposed by Gary’s father who wrote “What Color is Your Parachute?”   [36:47] Parents ask “Why won’t my kid get a real job?” It’s a hedge strategy. It’s ensuring optionality.   [39:00] How culture can be a journey, defined by a mindset and behaviors that are reinforced.   [41:30] What is the process and ongoing actions that empower agency and co-creation?   [43:46] Gary defines empathy as lived experiences. He focuses on caring for coworkers.   [47:19] The sea change ahead as more capable tools come online.   [48:08] Work involving synthesis is greatly enhanced by AI-boosted tools.   [49:46] Leaders need to focus on helping workers be upskilled and utilize the tools to solve current problems.   [51:18] Starting with a growth (vs fixed) mindset and focusing on flex (or soft) skills for today’s business needs.   [52:15] Companies must invest in training employees as education systems are still biased towards teaching bodies of knowledge, not flexible skills that augment interactions and social situations.   [55:40] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Reframe managers and supervisors as team guides. Rethink the process, what their role is, and how you can help them to guide teams throughout your organization, “un-boss” meetings, and be there to remove roadblocks so team members can co-create solutions.   RESOURCES   Gary Bolles on LinkedIn Gary Bolles on Twitter @gbolles Gary’s book “The Next Rules of Work: The Mindset, Skillset and Toolset to Lead Your Organization through Uncertainty” Gary’s website eparachute.com Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfil Your Potential QUOTES (edited)   “We’re pattern recognizers, we’re general-purpose problem-solving machines.”   “I think that’s actually a failure on our part, wasting a perfectly good pandemic. We showed that we can trust. We showed that we can imbue teams with the power to be able to decide when and where and with whom and how they work. And then we took it away from them.”   “We’re going to find that once you’ve given people agency and some level of autonomy, they don’t want to give it back. And I think that’s a perfectly reasonable request.”   “Along comes a pandemic, and suddenly you and I are looking into each other’s homes on Zoom calls. And we realize: that’s a whole person and if I’m an employer I have to be responsible for their physical health, their mental health, their emotional health, the whole person. And that’s not what I signed up for in the old rules of work!”   “I don’t hear a lot of workers complain to me that they’re not engaged. That’s not the way that a worker would say it. A worker would typically say ‘I want to feel motivated by my work’, ‘I want to feel like I have meaning in my work’, ‘I want to feel well compensated’, ‘I want to feel recognized.’”   “Gen Z was born around 9/11. They were children through the global recession and young adults in a global pandemic, on a planet on fire. There aren’t a lot of other generations that have had that sequence of precarity.”   “In a world of almost complete uncertainty, there are no safe jobs.”   “Why are you waiting to enjoy life until retirement? Does that make any sense in a world on fire? No. We’re going to do it now.”   “We keep thinking “Just shove more bodies of knowledge into those little heads”. And that’s not the way the world is working. The shelf life of that information, of those skills, is decaying so rapidly.  We have to explicitly teach these much more flexible skills and then employers have to demand them.”     

Dave Cairns, SVP Office Leasing for CBRE, focuses on working with high growth companies in the tech sector. Dave is a futurist relating to the office market. He shares his views about commercial real estate trends including current realities, core issues, lease restructuring ahead, and future possibilities such as shifting to offer “Space As A Service” going forward. Dave describes the benefits of new richer community demographics as urban dwellers move out. He also sees great potential of virtual worlds to offer more options and richer experiences.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:40] Dave intentionally created a happy place.   [04:06] He gets a university degree although he hones other skills.   [05:10] Flexible studying allows Dave to develop his talents at poker.   [05:36] Competitive poker playing success gives Dave a cushion during the 2008 Great Recession.   [06:55] Trying to improve his game, Dave accidentally becomes a poker instructor.   [09:04] Dave loves playing live poker but the risk:reward ratio is much better online.   [10:00] Playing 8-15 hours a day takes its toll, but motivation and autonomy matter.   [11:55] The dynamics of poker—responding to your opponent.   [13:00] What Dave learned about reading people virtually.   [13:24] “Thin slicing” a person—making decisions based on a narrowly focused initial read.   [15:12] Exogenous events cause Dave to change direction—it seemed timely too.   [16:28] Exploring potentially viable work environments, Dave interviews with brokerages.   [17:12] Insurances brokerages hesitate over Dave’s poker history, but commercial real estate likes it.   [18:12] Dave uses his natural interpersonal and analytical skills.   [18:40] The work situation is not desirable, but Dave believes he will be able to improve it over time.   [19:23] When the pandemic hits, Dave quickly recognizes work will be structured differently in future.   [20:14] The pandemic expands Dave’s interests to include corporate culture, HR, and social justice.   [22:14] Pre-pandemic, WeWork’s consumer facing brand threatens the commercial real estate sector despite their limited footprint.   [23:42] Customers seek more flexibility, exposing issues with valuations and long leases.   [25:01] Dave describes the current and likely vacancy situation of Toronto’s tech submarkets.   [28:06] Circumstances are complex with dependencies on existing long-term leases.   [29:29] What new strategies are possible including conversions to residential?   [31:27] “Space As A Service” is a useful approach, especially to offer shorter team arrangements.   [32:34] More ad hoc arrangements or restructuring leases would provide more utility.   [33:27] Why many landlords are not trying to activate buildings differently.   [35:14] Dave benefits from knowing how to build relationships “remote first” as a poker player.   [35:57] The benefit of a multidimensional global perspective with a hyper-localized business.   [36:34] Dave explores different opportunities including remote work to help SaaS companies.   [38:34] Dave is passionate about helping reshape some of the industry sector’s problems.   [39:37] Is Dave gaslighting his wife about moving?!   [40:59] How richer communities are developing and socioeconomic divides decreasing thanks to distributed working.   [43:19] The Metaverse is not yet here, but Dave is convinced virtual worlds present much opportunity in the Future of Work.   [44:43] Earning people’s attention in virtual space by creating friction—having to develop an avatar.   [45:05] How can diversity and inclusion be supported in virtual worlds.   [46:00] Discovering they are embodying mission critical innovation/collaboration activities virtually.   [46:43] Media-generated perspectives and stereotypes about people who work outside the office.   [47:10] Dave anticipates many future use cases, different needs and possibilities convening in virtual worlds.   [49:26] Video game-based guild members’ interactions provide strong use cases for online collaboration.   [50:43] Not judging people who participate in virtual worlds.   [52:19] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: If you are starting a new company, test out collaborating in virtual environments before considering physical real estate — from a cost and risk mitigation perspective. People come first and foremost so the key is activating collaboration and the intention you put behind it.     RESOURCES   Dave Cairns on LinkedIn Dave Cairns on Twitter     QUOTES (edited)   “The most important thing that you're trying to do in poker, whether it's in person or not, is pick up on pattern recognition.”   “WeWork exposed the fact that office buildings have more risk in them than we all thought because the tenant — the customer in the conventional sense — is seeking far more least flexibility and service than they ever got. The employee wants hospitality, great technology, and network of spaces that they can use on a global scale.”   “The office environments in these tech hubs are ghost towns because all of the tech companies have embraced remote work. Either they're totally set up to work distributed or they're doing it from a talent and retention perspective: they can't afford to call people back to the office or they're gonna lose people. So you've got the restaurants in these areas, you've got condos that people are living in, and you've got office that nobody's using.”   “Talent attraction and retention needs to be a global thing out of necessity. It's not like a nice to have thing.”   “So much of the work that we do is “remote work”. You're just choosing to do it from an office and power to you if that's where you want to do it! But don't deny the fact that a lot of the work that we're doing in real estate is location independent work.”   “I'm far more interconnected with the fabric of my society than I ever was in the large city I lived in my whole life. And we're forging relationships with people all over that are both economic and social, and it's incredible. And more of it needs to happen.”   “A lot of the perception is you're either are all in on the metaverse and you want to live in a virtual world in your basement in pajamas and be a total degenerate, or you're going to go back to the office and be a normal contributing member of society. That's the juxtaposition and of course it's not that at all.”  

Joanna Parsons is the Founder and Director of The Curious Route and one of the leading experts in internal communication across the UK and Ireland. Joanna’s experience spans non-profit, government (the police force), and corporate domains. She brings new thinking and approaches to key employee events and environments to stimulate curiosity, develop connections, and nurture shared understanding of culture across disparate and distributed employee groups. Joanna shares the benefits of “unlearning” especially to collaborate effectively as we establish new ways of working. KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:39] Joanna is very curious about people, culture, social norms, and human behavior.   [03:35] At 12 years old, Joanna starts reaching out through communications.   [04:23] Joanna starts in internal communications for an NGO in India but changes sector to satisfy her ambitious nature.   [05:42] Getting to know her audience, Joanna draws on storytelling to create compelling messages.   [06:55] Changing company cultures can be jarring, but Joanna acclimates easily in financial services.   [07:54] Communication challenges across sectors are similar—eg relating to jargon and leadership communications.   [08:34] A poor personal experience of corporate induction, Joanna boldly gamifies the process.   [10:49] A speed dating approach builds relationships between new recruits and employees and executives.   [13:52] Joanna shares how the new onboarding process energized long-time employees as well.   [15:00] Having real conversations matters for building ties with new employees.   [16:05] The Irish police force recruits Joanna into a recommended new Head of Internal Comms role.   [16:45] Joanna walks into a divided “us vs them” culture—she loves a good challenge!   [18:05] After a great time in the interview, Joanna thinks they will never pick her.   [19:26] Joanna spends the first three months visiting people, listening, and watching.    [20:15] Understanding an organization’s information flow takes time, patience, and observation.   [21:47] Building relationships in personal ways and showing respect are critical for developing trust.   [23:42] After demonstrating she listened and is offering relevant solutions, leaders invite her to help them.   [24:43] During an early lockdown, the Swiss police reach out to the Irish police with a dance challenge!   [26:33] Once posted, the video goes viral and other groups start sending in their own versions.   [27:53] The dance challenge and great empathy demonstrated by the police during the pandemic changed public perception and improved trust in the Irish police.   [30:40] Internal communications is centered on shared understanding across all employees emphasizing the organization’s vision, mission, and values.   [32:42] “Unlearning” previous habits can be a helpful approach for adapting to new ways of working.   [34:21] The Curious Route describes Joanna’s approach to work and her newsletter.   [36:16] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: First—when creating a communication, think about the audience, not yourself, and connect it to them. Second—when you are writing something, get to the point. Say what you want to say, say it quickly, and stop. RESOURCES   Joanna Parsons on LinkedIn Joanna’s website TheCuriousRoute Joanna’s newsletter The Curious Route An Garda Síochána Dance Challenge Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less QUOTES (edited)   “It is really all about understanding the people before you start trying to create a message.”   “Even though you can switch industries—I was in the charity sector then financial services, then policing, and now in tech—all the communication challenges are actually more similar than different.”   “The first three months, it probably just looked like I was drinking coffee. This is where all my sociology training came in because I just listened and observed and ask questions.”   “The trick for anyone that is Head of Communications is to build really strong relationships across the organization.”   “The core of a really good internal communications function is to create a shared understanding across all the employees.”