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Description
Sticking the needle into accepted workplace practices.
There's lot wrong that goes on in the workplace today and Colin, Paul and Ben aren't afraid to point it out - in fact, they delight in it. What they like even more is debunking myths, slaughtering sacred cows, challenging assumptions and generally giving 'recieved wisdom' the skewering it truly deserves.
It's all about making the workplace better, more human and a place for thriving, not just surviving. Drawing upon their extensive experience and broad knowledge, they also offer examples of how to do it better, what more progressive approaches and more modern practices look like and what alternatives there are to the 'same old same old'.
It's time to take on the Status Quo and bring in a new wave!
17 Episodes
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At the occasion of Mental Health Awareness Week our punks explore what role our working environment plays when it comes to our mental health. Despite billions spent on measures to reduce work related stress, employees report higher than ever rates of burnout and are leaving the workplace altogether en-masse. And this concerns younger generations as well as older. Is there something fundamentally wrong with how companies lead, manage and organise work? And what role do new technologies play in...
Inspiration for this month's episode has been Boeing's slow but steady slip from great engineering firm to hesitant choice for your next holiday flight. How the actions and words of a few people at the top drive the behaviours and decisions throughout the organisation. With real impact for customers and workers alike. Can organisations on a cultural decline be turned around? Do we as individuals also need to have a good look in the mirror? Join us for this episode for a few spiky views....
Our guest in this episode is Rebecca Cullum, who earned her stripes in leadership development in the IT and mobile phone sectors. Now operating independently, Rebecca supports leaders and their teams in establishing the culture, behaviours and mindsets that are required for 2024 and beyond. No surprises that these include being open to flexible working practices, encouraging learning and experimentation and accepting that what worked in the past may not work in the future. Some of the referen...
Our special guest on this episode is Henry Stewart, who not only named his company 'Happy', he helps other companies become happy too. It took a Damascene epiphany for Henry to change from self-confessed micro-manager into a CEO who makes no decisions. Since then, Henry has transformed his company into one that not only practices what it preaches, it positively ploughs the furrow by experimenting with new ways of working and challenging accepted wisdom when it comes to creating effective, pro...
1Our special guest on this first episode of 2024 is Geoff Marlow, well-known for his work with large organisations on getting them to become more innovative, agile and adaptive, and for the Five Fatal Habits he identified as key when organisations fail in their attempts to become more nimble. Both in his education and his early career, Geoff realised that being empowered and encouraged to explore, experiment and learn suited him better than adopting so-called best-practices and (re)produce wha...
Are you struggling with a toxic, overbearing boss, to the extent that you have sought professional help to deal with it? If so, you're not alone. In this episode, our Punks reflect on a recent study that identified one-third of workers requiring therapy to deal with their work situations. Why is that? Are you perhaps one of those bosses? And how could this be overcome? Sources mentioned: - Article about workers with toxic bosses requiring therapy and the Sunday Scaries. https://africa.busines...
In this episode our Punks discuss Ben's ambition to create a progressive MBA programme, one that leaves the formulaic traps of established MBAs for dust and prepares the leaders of the future with the skills that the 2020s demand. After all, with large parts of the workforce working flexibly, AI looming large over everyone, and Gen Z entrants to the labour market no longer interested in climbing the corporate ladder, traditional leadership skills (whatever they are) no longer fit the bi...
Special guest in this episode: Charles Towers-Clark, writer of "The WEIRD CEO" (and the CEO of the title). Artificial Intelligence has gone mainstream lately, with ChatGPT and other tools now firmly in the public eye. Years ago, Charles concluded that in order to prepare his company POD Group and its workforce for the advent of AI, a radical rethink of how work is organised was called for. And so he went about introducing concepts of autonomy and self management to his company. Wha...
This week we wrestle with the issue of holidays. We all agree that we need holidays and they have a postive impact on our health and our performance, yet there are very mixed messages from employers. We discuss different norms in US and Europe, whether people should decide for themselves how much holiday they take (the Netflix approach) or should we be insisting they take the holidays they are given. We look at how organisations consider holidays and whether they allow for them in their plann...
As the tug of war continues between companies demanding employees come back to the office and workers choosing organisations supportive of flexible working arrangements, one key question concerns the future of the office. In this episode of Work Punks our guest Damian Mears sheds light on this conundrum, and what it means for the design of the future workplace.
Colin Newlyn (Decrapify Work), Ben Simpson (VitalOrg) and Paul Jansen (Trust Works) discuss news, developments and innovations from the world of work. This time with special guest Lizzie Benton of Liberty Mind. The 2023 Gallup survey on employee engagement rears its head in this latest episode, and make Lizzie and our Punks wonder why we in the UK fail to learn from better performers. Changing our ways seems hard but why is that, and which approaches would be more likely to succeed? And shoul...
Does it help to be 'a little bit narcissistic' if you aspire to be a good leader? A recent survey says so, but you can trust our Punks to tear this piece of research to threads.So what does good leadership look like? This episode covers such ingredients as authenticity, personality traits versus skills, roles versus positions, and how to encourage a diversity of candidates to step into the limelight.Some recommended sources on the topics discussed: "Leading from the Heart with Mark C. Cr...
In "HR: Victim or Perpetrator" our punks discuss the unenviable position HR professionals find themselves in while working practices around them are changing at a rapid pace. Should they cling on to the policy-making, company-protecting interpretation of their role? Should they bring in new ways of working more in tune with the hybrid wave and Gen-Z's expectations? Or is a completely new interpretation of their role called for, and is the whole concept of 'HR' anachronistic?
In this episode our old punks sink their dentures into the question whether Employee Ownership is the route staff engagement and therefore to success. They discuss: The woes of the John Lewis department store and whether its employee ownership model is at risk of being undermined by possible new measuresThe perils of picking one or two incentives from the employee ownership world, without going all the way. Those unintended consequences strike again...How democratic decision-making proce...
In this episode our old punks are debating (and expressing some sympathy for) the position of the middle manager. In particular:Why in all those years of management training and leadership development so little progress has been madeWhat of the recent developments in work have made the role of the middle manager even more challengingWhat systemic change is required and where we might look for alternativesHow remote monitoring technology in this age of working from home has proliferated, and t...
Under the headline 'Size Matters' in this episode our old Punks are debating:Team size and Social Loafing: myth or something to worry about?The benefit of good conversational skills (and what are they?)Why is poor mental health an issue especially in large companies? Some recommended reading on topics discussed:Why Less is More in Teams, Mark de Rond, HBR August 2012The rational manager: A systematic approach to problem solving and decision making by Charles H. Kepner & Benjamin B. T...
Colin, Ben and Paul each bring a topic up for discussion, which then gets booted around and generally deconstructed. Colin kicks it off with the 4-day week, Ben rants about Bullshit Jobs and meaningless work and Paul finishes off with the issue of psychological safety.
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