Eat Sleep Work Repeat - better workplace culture

Dave Trott is a creative director, copywriter, and author. A colossus of advertising who has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by D&AD.I chatted to him at the IAB Leadership Summit in St Albans.It's not a talk about work culture as such - just a fascinating chat with someone whose job it was to be creative for a living. Dave's latest book Creative Blindness is a riot of colourful stories and lively lessons. Follow Dave on Twitter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’re chatting to the MD of the innovations company IDEO, Sue Siddall to hear how they bring the power of telling stories to life in their organisation. In addition we’ve got a legend of workplace study today. William Kahn was responsible for creating two of the big concepts of positive workplaces. He coined the concepts of both psychological safety and employee engagement. William Kahn is Professor of Organisational Behavior at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He received his BA in Psychology from Clark University and his doctorate in Psychology from Yale University. Sue Siddall tells us about 'Story Night' at IDEO. Sue is the UK MD of IDEO - a company who often provide inspiration to other organisations when they are thinking of fixing their culture.If you like this, sign up for the New Work Now mailer here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’ve not already subscribed there’s a weekly email that goes out with the podcast. This week's includes a brilliant article on how small teams seem to be more radical, there’s a couple of discussions about Professor Adam Grant’s work and there’s a really good article on laughter in teams.The laughter in teams article is from some research that NASA is looking at when it comes to casting their first expeditions to Mars. NASA looked at the success of different teams in isolation in Antartica. And it seemed that when there is a joker in the team, someone gifted in the art of lightening the mood it helps the overall morale of the team. I found this one fascinating, in The Joy of Work i talk about the successful Cambridge Boat race team in 2008 whose performance was transformed from a losing practice tie to winning boat race performance when they promoted a funny colleague to the boat. They felt that even though this wasn’t the best performing athlete they all felt themselves to be in a better mental state when he was present. This is really neglected as a component of a happy team and if you’ve read The Joy of Work you’ll know I’m obsessed with it. And it leads on to today’s guest. Robert Provine’s 2000 book Laughter is a real page turner of research about one of the most enjoyable but least studied aspects of modern life. He has also gone on to cover laughter - and other human behaviours in his 2013 book Curious Behaviour - Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond. Provine is the world’s expert on the subject. When we talked to Professor Sophie Scott in the live episode on laughter at work this time last year she mentioned professor Provine several times, and he’s also been the consultant for products like Tickle Me Elmo. There’s some fascinating discussion. Laughter seems to signal a couple of things, safety and play. He makes a really interesting point at the end about the current state of politics being filled with the opposite of laughter - which is fear and angerThere was an interesting exercise a few years ago (and this was called out in Dan Lyons book lab rats) the exercise was conducted by Dan Ariely looked at the data from Great Place to Work. Ariely wanted to see if they had anything that correlated with stock data, to see if it would give you good investment advice to put money in good culture companies. Great Place to Work has been running since 1981 and each year has surveyed thousands of workers. Ariely looked at the data they had gathered.There was one factor that leapt out. But it was an odd thing. It was safety. Companies where people consistently reported feeling safe at work tended to outperform the stock market average, sometimes by 200%. It applied to physical and emotional safety. The other factor that seemed to correlate was companies that had a strong sense of welcome.If you listen to Professor Provine laughter would be in service of making all of those things stronger. What follows is the science of laughter, why we laugh and what it does. I hope you enjoy it.Robert R. Provine, is a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I called him on the phone to pick his brain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks to Penguin Random House here's a free extract of a couple of different parts of The Joy of Work.You can buy the full audiobook here.: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode today is magnificent – you’re really going to be stimulated and challenged by it.Today’s episode is with someone I contacted 2 years ago to discuss his previous book. Cal Newport’s Deep Work was a simple avocation of the process of using uninterrupted concentration to get things done. He’s now back with a new book about taking the same principles beyond work into life. It's a guide for achieving happiness by being more intentional in how you use technology. Some might call it a manual. What follows here is a sensational discussion with Cal - Digital Minimalism is out next week. I heard someone say recently that if you hear a new idea and its not shocking, its not really new. On that criteria this is really new. You’re going to find it mind expanding. Maybe you’ll disagree with it but it will leave you thinking for hours afterwards. Cal believes we should eliminate email. He thinks we should stop being connected to 100s of people on social media. He thinks we should distinguish between social conversation and digital connection. Where we should eliminate all digital interactions. He’s got a way for you to get there. He speaks of three principles of digital minimalismClutter is costlyOptimisation is importantIntentionality is satisfyingHere's a great article on the book.His suggestions in the book – that we touch on are that we should abandon weak digital ties with people. If you find yourself merely liking someone’s photographs in the course of your relationship then you should detach yourself from them. I remember when I was on Facebook thinking I was going to cull anyone I wouldn’t go over and greet if I saw in the street and he says something probably a couple of steps further. Not only is this chat great but he tells me about his next book that sounds incredible. I won’t make a big introduction because I asked Cal to do that himself so here he is. He’s Cal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a podcast about making work better. You can find all of the previous episodes on the website.Here we go, two little things today to make you feel more brainy. It’s Blue Monday in the UK today - the day when we’re told it’s the most miserable day of the year - when we hate our job. By listening to these experts you’ll have some guidelines how you can make work better. They give solutions but I think once you listen to the data you’ll work out what to do yourselves.Firstly something that might not seem directly connected to people in work initially but it’s about loneliness. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Brigham Young University. We start talking about the problem of loneliness in society and we go on to consider how loneliness is growing in work.Next I wanted to talk to two researchers who have set about investigating if working long hours - or working harder leads to greater workplace success. The authors of the paper are the brilliant Argyro Avgoustaki from ESCP Europe and Hans Frankort from Cass Business SchoolRead the paper on fixing work by Argyro Avgoustaki (ESCP Europe) and Hans Frankort (Cass Business School) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you're looking to get a job sometime in the next decade - and that includes almost all of us - there's a very high probability that you're going to be exposed to a psychometric test. As they become enhanced by AI and made more scaleable via apps these tests are going to go everywhere. So what are the implications for what work is going to look at.This episode I'm looking into the evolving nature of recruiting and how its changing to accommodate the latest science and also innovations in technology. Firstly I'm going to get my hands dirty testing one of the new evolving candidate testing apps that are starting to emerge. Then I'm chatting to Rich Littledale and he is a chartered psychologist who previously worked at a leadership consulting firm and now helps start ups with their strategic people challenges.Buy The Joy of WorkFollow Rich LittledaleRead more about PeopleUp - Rich's firmSign up for Eat Sleep UpdatesJust a reminder that all of the episodes are live on the website Eat Sleep Work Repeat.Rich Littledale runs a company called People Up. In the show he mentioned a blog post - you can find it here.As Rich there says most orchestras have now introduced blind auditions and in fact most them use carpeted stages to avoid the sound of shoes. Read more here:https://www.upworthy.com/this-orchestras-blind-audition-proves-bias-sneaks-in-when-you-least-expect-ithttps://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-biashttps://cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Goldin_Orchestrating%20Impartiality.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buy The Joy of WorkFollow Rob BrinerSign up for Eat Sleep UpdatesRob Briner is an professor of organisational behaviour at London Queen Mary’s University - he's rated the top HR thinker in the UK. This is a brilliant chat. Very much essential listening for anyone interested in HR but also worth listening for those of us who sit thinking ‘what do HR actually do?’ or what should we do to improve things round here.We talk about ‘evidence based management’ - which you can find out more about here: The Centre for Evidence Based Management. I’d researched it but he explained it way better. He ends up giving me his take on work culture and lots lots more. Rob outlines some of the pitfalls that any of us make when we set about fixing work. He also explains the challenges of psychology - discussing something called 'the replication crisis' about large scale studies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pre-order The Joy of WorkFollow Stevyn ColganSign up for Eat Sleep UpdatesFollowing up the discussion with Andy Rhodes this week it's a second episode about the police. My original plan was to edit both of them to get one episode about the profession but both were too good to chop up. So I want to flag that It's kind of about work culture but also kind of just a brilliant chat with a fascinating person. Consider it as a box set with the other police episode. When it gets into its flow it covers dog shows, walking buses and all manner of brilliance.Stevyn Colgan joined the police after a bet from his dad - which he explains. I was put on him by our last guest Andy Rhodes who told me about ways they used dog shows to reduce the tension on council estates. Rather than chop it down to just cover the way that Stevyn led innovation in the workplace I've just left it intact. He's too interesting for me to butcher the chat.Stevyn is the perfect example of a multi level life via his illustrations he became friends with Douglas Adams and ended up being a writer on the TV show QI. He wrote a book about his police problem solving unit work called One Step ahead. He's actually just published a novel called a Murder to Die For.I'm not gonna lie we spent ages one summer evening sitting in the pub garden of a Amersham pub. My intro is me reminding him about this podcast but the chat it provokes is quite interesting.If you want to learn more sign up for our newsletter at eatsleepworkrepeat.fm - thanks for listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pre-order The Joy of WorkFollow Andy RhodesSign up for Eat Sleep UpdatesThis is the first of two episodes on the police this week. One on dealing with stress in 'blue light' professions, one on how to be creative in stressful environments.Andy Rhodes is the Chief Constable of Lancashire - and has responsibility for the wellbeing initiative in the UK police force. He talks through the challenges of policing under pressure. What do you do to stop police profiling people they encounter? The answer starts with how you treat them at work. I think you'll be inspired with the lead that Andy is taking.To hear more about the evidence based approach to wellbeing in the police go to the Oscar Kilo website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.