The more you talk about culture, the less people believe you

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1:09Professor Benjamin Laker: This is Eat Sleep Work Repeat. It's a podcast about making work better. I'm Bruce Daisley. Today's conversation is with Professor Benjamin Laker. Now, I've been following the work of Professor Laker for a long time, largely because some of the work that he's published in things like Harvard Business Review or Sloan MIT Management Review have been the pieces that I've shared most over the last few years. In particular, his piece on Meeting Three Days was kind of my go-to link that I was having discussions with people about for the last three years, really. Professor Laker published an article about six months ago in Harvard Business Review that I just wanted to talk to him about.

1:53Professor Benjamin Laker: So I got in touch. So just to properly introduce him, he's a professor of leadership at Henley Business School, part of the University of Reading. He's written several bestselling books and it's his articles that I think I especially enjoy because they often seem to capture the moment we're in and the way that our relationship with work is changing. So witness that idea of meeting for days or job crafting or anything in relation to these things. And we go specifically into this article then in HBR and the article in HBR reflected on how you could think about changing culture and bringing culture to life.

2:32Professor Benjamin Laker: And one of the things I wrote about it in the newsletter about a month ago, one of the things it talks about specifically is the idea that we shouldn't necessarily treat workplace culture initiatives like campaigns. They're not just about standing up and changing the values, about sort of addressing the team and telling them what's changed. They are more about demonstrating behaviour change. In fact, we go into sort of a lot of discussion, which effectively sort of concludes that the role of a leader is to be the explainer in chief. And we talk a little bit about Zohran Mandami in New York, actually, and how he's trying to overcome the cynicism with politicians by demonstrating action.

3:16Professor Benjamin Laker: But he also recognises that comms is an important part of that, but it comes at the end or it comes as a sort of explanation. It's no substitute for change in action. Really sort of fascinating to compare those things. It's a great discussion. I think you're really going to enjoy this. There's a full transcript with links to some of the management thinkers that Benjamin mentions along the way. I've linked them in the transcript. This is my conversation with Professor Benjamin Laker. Benjamin, thank you so much for joining me. I wonder if to kick off, you could just introduce who you are and what you do.

3:53Bruce Daisley: Well, thanks for having me here. Benjamin Laker, I'm a professor of leadership at Henley Business School, which is the business school of the University of Reading in the UK. And as a professor there, I'm very interested in the world of work and contemporary work and particularly how decisions are made and specifically how individuals navigate some of the most pressing challenges of today, whether that be AI or culture within side organisations and matrix work to really understand how work can be not just productive because really companies want that but also meaningful for those who undertake it and and bring themselves into work every day.

4:32Professor Benjamin Laker: And so big picture questions but when you're thinking about workplace culture what do you understand workplace culture to be?

4:39Bruce Daisley: So really it is about the dynamics of an entity whether that be a workplace in physical form. Of course, it could exist in a virtual form or hybrid form. And those conditions or dynamics inform the way that things are done. So sometimes you'll hear this phrase, it's the way that we do things here. And that could specifically be about whether it's appropriate to drink coffee or particularly to have a lunch break or how long the lunch break is. But on a more macro level, it could be about the type of people we hire or the type of people we retain or specifically the type of contracts that we give certain people to or how we bring people together on certain journeys and make decisions.

5:28Professor Benjamin Laker: I wonder if, like, I've always got this perspective. I've worked in some British organisations, I've worked in some American organisations, and it really strikes me that there's a slight lost in translation element to culture in the sense that when you deal with American companies, they very much subscribe to, I think, what Reed Hastings said, that culture is what gets rewarded and what gets punished. It's sort of like a flow chart. It's like the highway code of how the company operates. When you chat to most Europeans about their company culture, so not necessarily people who study it, they speak about something that's far less rational and far more emotional.

6:10Professor Benjamin Laker: They describe how it feels around here rather than the norms, the practices, the handbook. Do you recognise that distinction? and if yes or not, I'd just be interested in how you would sort of evolve that or change that.

6:27Bruce Daisley: Yeah, I definitely would. And I think without trying to turn this into too much of an academic scientific lens on culture, but really, if you think about at its most simplest form, culture exists when you have two people with some sort of shared lineage or shared experience. So, for example, I really like Diet Coke. So if a person who likes Diet Coke walks into the room, we now have a culture. And I don't drink coffee. So if people who like coffee come into the room, I'm not part of their culture. I'm outside of their culture. So, of course, whether or not you are even in, say, the same company, whether it be multinational, and you have a footprint in, say, the US and in Europe, even though it's the same company, and that may have an overarching company culture, because of the experiences, of individuals who are in those different geographical regions, they themselves will then have cultures that Hofstede would regard as national differences.

7:30And that could be things like power distance,

7:35Bruce Daisley: attitudes to work, religious culture, but it could simply be more in the nuance that you've referred to, which I think is the difference in US and European differences might be at the psychological level why the company exists. And so in the US, if at the very center of why a company exists is more purist in terms of capitalistic tendencies, then actually how it feels around here may not be as important because what's that got to do with making a profit it might not whereas if you think about then european tenets is much more likely to have individuals who have implicitly been exposed to socialist ideas things like health care paternity leave maternity leave extended um in in that regard much more so say than us much shorter working weeks, the idea that perhaps a more diminished rat race, so to speak, then clearly those policies would infer that how people feel at work is quite important.

8:49Bruce Daisley: And that can then influence why, when you talk and you ask people, what does culture mean around here? You have, it's about policies and procedure versus, no, it's about actually how people feel and policies and procedures doesn't feel particularly warming in comparison to, say, extended or shared maternity slash paternity leave for 12 months.

9:14Professor Benjamin Laker: And by the very nature of that, then, do you feel that the American approach is more profitable? Actually, let me ask you this. Do you think that this is all an indulgence of business? that have you in your work seen a straight line between better culture and better business success

9:38Bruce Daisley: but i think it depends what the definition better is because in my opinion better just simply means it's consistent so if a company says this is our culture and this is what you sign up for and then people come to work in that environment they understand exactly where they are at what the expectations are how they'll be measured and so if you have a company that says we don't tolerate xyz you have to be here permanently in an office five days a week this is what you're signing up for do not ask for extended leave do not ask for any of these types of um other additionalities but here is the salary that you will work for and typically salaries in the u.s outpace some within Europe, you are then able as a worker, as part of the psychological contract, to either accept those conditions or not.

10:31Bruce Daisley: And I feel that even in an environment where there are, say, stripped back benefits rather than just redimeration, if a person has taken the decision to work there without no additional benefits, they will prefer that, they will describe that as a better culture than somebody else who perhaps has entered into a workplace under the idea that this is a particular type of culture and perhaps we might be for example inclusive and then you find out actually no it's not that is completely espoused and there's no consistency in terms of what the messaging is and um uh what hofstein and minceberg might then describe as say the um the implicit culture which is not espoused and there's an inconsistency then between between both

11:18Professor Benjamin Laker: it's really interesting because what you seem to be describing to me is the the difference between an individualistic culture we're like it's it's an association of people but they're all focused on their own objectives and a collectivist culture on the more you know the european side say but i think we see this in other places in europe and by the very nature i perceive culture to be collective. So the idea that we would have an individualistic culture, they seem slightly at odds with each other. That American model that, you know, for example, and what we might see exhibited in an individualistic culture is that we might see stack ranking of employees.

12:01Professor Benjamin Laker: We might see individual targets rather than collective targets. We might see performance management of people based on whether they accomplished their own specific goals with the consequence with the consequence that very few people do things specifically for the collective because it seems like a sort of an altruistic waste of time do those things go through then through those different perspectives of culture it could it could entirely although the counterpoint would be that perhaps the american model is more renowned for innovation for those reasons because

12:37Bruce Daisley: essentially you're driving opportunities for persons to be quite individualistically rewarded and if you look at tech for example most innovation is coming from silicon valley and where um ai conversations are having the european counter to that which is much more collective appears to be going slower and i think sometimes you might need speed just to be able to be first to market or indeed have first move advantage and perhaps actually the more perhaps aggressive individualistic approach seems to produce better results. Of course, that's not necessarily a play on culture, but in regard to innovation and entrepreneurialism, if a founder, which is to start a business, it's just them.

13:29Bruce Daisley: and so the idea probably comes before the setting of culture whereas perhaps much more established entities with the european-centric mindset maybe focusing on the culture to begin with so for example they might think i'm going to start a company and this is what i want it to feel like in order to work there rather than just putting the idea out there just saying this is the app this is the business idea this is what I want to solve culture will come later when I have employees and we'll worry about that and work that out then you wrote this fabulous article

14:03Professor Benjamin Laker: um with a few of the collaborators that was published in August last year in HBR and I was really taken with it and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to get in touch with you because because you talk about in that article you talk about why culture change programs don't really work and the the the thing that i really took from it is that most cultural change programs are communication you know they're just changing messaging and that if if there's any way to think about culture it's behavior and you know it's a bit like at the start of the year we see all these books about habits and trying to change our individual patterns of behavior and culture is just like a collective habit really it's rituals it's things that organizations do and so of course communication isn't going to work with that is that is that my my is my take on that correct is that how you see the most cultural change programs fail because they're commerce plans

15:04Bruce Daisley: yes exactly that and actually the the working title of the article up until it was published um i think was something like the more you talk about culture the less people believe you so it very much was a communications piece um and what we were trying to suggest and this is not necessarily a novel idea it's just more that our findings were consistent with previous thinking on the idea on the subject of culture is that in order to change uh anything really whether that's an individualistic habit like for example you want to well i'm trying to stop drinking too much diet companies might want to change logistics or supply chain or behavioral change there's a lot of surface window dressing that often is changeable because it's easy but to actually drill in to change habits perhaps behaviors or mindsets attitude belief these types of things it's very hard and it's also quite hard to communicate that and therefore in order to perhaps measure or demonstrate output demonstrate change success you want to be able to communicate the things that you can communicate and so the problem with that is you're only communicating the surface level things and the assumption therefore is that those are the things so for example we want to become more inclusive therefore we value people okay well what does that actually mean and what are you doing differently rather than just simply saying that um and to drill in to think about what changes you might need to undertake as an organization would be quite difficult because it could be nuanced or it could be ambiguous therefore it's difficult to communicate So you're only going to communicate what people easily understand.

17:05Bruce Daisley: And that assumption is that those things are the cultural change, which is not true.

17:11Professor Benjamin Laker: Because the article says that our research found that across companies that had launched formal cultural initiatives, I guess that's cultural change initiatives, 72 % showed no meaningful improvement in employee trust, engagement or retention one year later. It's pretty damning, isn't it, in terms of the idea of trying to change these patterns of behaviour of groups?

17:35Bruce Daisley: Yes. And I think you will find that in a lot of these organisations, you're already quite up against it because of previous initiatives. And so there's very much this idea of, here we go again, another document, another roundtable, another round, a town hall meeting. The slogan is changing. The logo is changing. What's the agenda going to be this year? We've done this before. Nothing actually happened. Nothing changed as a result. This is repetition of that. So for a lot of these organizations, they're not even starting to put them in a place of neutrality. It's almost there's a negative connotation that this is simply a cycle and engaging with it on a superficial level is all that's actually required.

18:23Bruce Daisley: And that is why then I believe some of the scores were so high, because it was simply after the fact. individuals were already looking to confirm their idea that this is not wholehearted transformational change and as soon as they see signs that that is true then we have the 72 percent

18:45Professor Benjamin Laker: yeah and so that would suggest that the best way to think about any sort of initiative if you're a leader imagining that your audience isn't this they aren't the crowd at a wedding waiting for the the speeches to say anything to gift you a happy laugh they are deeply cynical suspicious potentially uncooperative very much so and because because they have been here before and that may have been during the tenure of the leader or previous to the leader it may have been that

19:19Bruce Daisley: a lot of these individuals are quite burned out or indeed burned from prior negative experiences and so it's very difficult because normally the language that a leader might make is i know in the past things were done but this time it's different but of course the danger is that everybody says that and so how will they know that this time truly is different

19:48Professor Benjamin Laker: and that's the challenge and is this specifically because you mentioned something in the article which says that employees notice when leadership actions contradict comments and statements that, you know, effectively, if leaders say we need to be saving money this quarter, and then they see the senior leaders going off on business class flights or luxury trips somewhere, they immediately think, OK, there's one rule for them, one rule for us. Is it because actually culture is laid out and defined in actions and behaviours rather than statements? How do you perceive it? I guess what I'm really interested in is where the pitfalls are and where the successes are.

20:33Bruce Daisley: It's very much so. And as a leader, often people may feel it's a very lonely position because there's no one necessarily around you who might understand your challenges or your pitfalls. there is a danger therefore thinking that the loneliness of the role means you have no proximity to other people when reality is everybody's watching you every email you send is being analyzed everything that you do every conversation that you have well you should really assume that conversation is then replayed and it's going around the team and so if there's the slightest this inconsistency that is going to be noticed 10x and i think for sometimes leaders may feel that what may be to them interpreted as a very small or perhaps it's not a consistency at all like some of the examples that you've had if we're trying to save money and there's a business class flight the assumption might be well i can justify that to myself because i'm able then to work on the flight so I'm being more productive and that may be true by the way but it's how that will then look and it's how that could be interpreted and both could be true it may be true that yes the type of flight that you're on means you can be more productive and you can work but equally you cannot control how individuals may then feel as a result of understanding that information alongside being told that perhaps their job is at risk or indeed their budgets have been slashed so sometimes it's an unfortunateness that even though actions that you believe are consistent and that are fair will be interpreted differently by those of whom you are leading

22:29Professor Benjamin Laker: you go on and you say excuse me you go on and you talk about when these things work and these things work effectively what not when people change the set of slogans on the wall or values or they they do a communication campaign but trust goes up when people witness leadership changes when when people witness changes of behavior of the leadership that effectively it's sort of show not tell is the best way to to move culture could you elaborate on that have you got any specific examples where you've seen it in action or or how would we understand that people would even notice

23:12Bruce Daisley: that the actions have changed yeah yeah and i think it's about and we specifically wrote at some point i don't know if it made the final cut but culture is not a campaign and often it is in in many uh persons ideas but what we try to say is well no it's it's not a campaign because some of these changes should exist not just within the confines and wrapped up in a nice bloversome campaign but actually these changes are necessarily needed so for example some of them and I've mentioned this idea of a lot of cultural change looking to become more inclusive workplaces you may have it where leaders deliberately step back from certain responsibilities or opportunities.

24:02Bruce Daisley: So it could be certain members of a hiring committee that are specifically looking to hire individuals or appoint those to post. And the overarching rhetoric is we're becoming a more diverse, inclusive organisation. Sounds like a great mission. But the panel itself isn't representative of that. And so in one of the organizations that we studied, we actually saw leaders recognize this, weren't asked to do so, but then acknowledged that if the position that they were looking to fill was one of which they are deliberately looking to bring in an individual regarded as diverse, that they would have to step back from the panel in order to make the panel more representative.

24:57Bruce Daisley: And so that was a good example. And when some of the persons we talked to about that, they thought, OK, well, that's quite important because stepping back in that regard is almost losing some level of influence. So the overriding this there of becoming more inclusive as a workplace would be very consistent because if we didn't see the panel change, then it really it just means applied to us as a level, but not the leadership level. But in this regard, no, okay, they are taking it very seriously. I'm now quite open-minded in terms of maybe this is real this time. So that was one example that really stood out.

25:37Professor Benjamin Laker: I've seen you talk about sort of one of the biggest problems for business is hubris and sort of overconfidence. And culture is one of the areas that we can fall foul of this, where culture quite often can be grounds for grandiosity that we can present that our culture is better than other people's cultures. And rather than to aspire to just create some functioning system thinking where we just work effectively together, we try to position it as a competitive advantage or a difference versus opposition. Could you talk a little bit about that? The pitfall of culture being grandiosity and actually, you know, rather than thinking about the sort of the mundanities of behaviour change, We think about words, stylings and sort of positioning.

26:28Bruce Daisley: Absolutely. And the real danger of this is that a company can believe that they have ownership over the culture. And really, culture is just the manifestation of a group of individuals. So if you have a hiring body who have then brought individuals in, as soon as you have those individuals, culture manifests. So actually, culture really is the ownership of those who manifest it as opposed to the company. So even the idea that a company can hubrisly say our culture is better than our competitors is quite a statement itself because it would infer that they have ownership over it. But actually, how can you?

27:22Really, if individuals wish to have certain orientation, they will have that in the same regard.

27:29Bruce Daisley: It's almost, if you were to imagine, and this example works because it would be jarring, but if a government says our culture in our nation is better than nation X, in that regard, you think, well, actually, no, the government doesn't own the culture of the people. It's owned by the manifestation of the people. But yet in organizations, we think somehow it's the ownership of the companies. It's their intellectual property. You can't. You can't copyright that. You can't protect that. it's simply how it is when you have those groups of individuals coming together and what they would regard as acceptable and if they don't you see it often there will be pushes for changes internally in terms of then things that then become much more accepted by whatever that group is and if you were to take that whole group out and you were to put a different group in you would find that certain things inside the organization now become unacceptable and that's not to say that one group was wrong and one's right because it's subjective it's simply about the mass that you have because of their shared experiences and their lives and their attitudes towards things certain things are going to resonate with them and in order to make work a fulfilling place conditions have to then be created in order for that to exist that's really striking that

28:49Professor Benjamin Laker: comparison to a country you know the idea that anyone from the king to the prime minister could stand up and describe our culture would be regarded as an overreach. And yet organisations are very willing to do it. And, you know, it makes me think as well of the Edelman Trust Index, where, like, increasingly there's a reduced... Well, we're seeing currently that there's a reducing amount of trust in our organisations, and, you know, like, it suggests that that plays a role. But what you described to me there, then, is that culture effectively feels like group identity, where the group feels some degree of ownership over the identity.

29:34Professor Benjamin Laker: And that might explain then, if the group, meaning the employees, don't feel a shared identity with the bosses, it's where you feel this cultural breach. And so that Edelman Trust Index, where people aren't trusting bosses anymore, that might be a good example of where culture fails, because the bosses who have seen big increases in pay over the last decade don't feel like they are the same group as the employees who've barely seen an increase in a decade. And I wonder if then, like, what you're describing is actually culture is about group identity. A lot of it will be because in order to have culture, the members of the culture have to have some shared identity.

30:22Bruce Daisley: And so as soon as you then step out of that, you can't have a singular culture anymore. And so what you would then have is a employee culture and then perhaps a managerial culture, but it's a separate culture because the constitute members of it, because of their shared experiences and their attitudes and the conditions of which they are working, it's manifesting something different. so you might then have multiple cultures existing within one entity which is very often what you will um what you will have and i think it was minnsberg who talked about say the operators culture and then you have managerial culture and then executive culture so three levels because the members of these three levels so it's middle management but then top tiers of senior execs or board versus then the operators people on say in the traditional sense of factory floor they're from completely different walks of life and they do not interact and so therefore it's very easy in that manufacturing example to to accept well yeah because they would have completely different cultures and of course now in today's world we want to have a singular culture with this side of an organization but you would then like you said you feel jarred when you start to think well I don't really believe um that leader x is aligned and actually I don't think they see the world the same way that we do and of course they're not remunerated the same way they do so actually what conditions are similar um to us and then you realize well not many other than we're both coming to work for the same door other than that and we might have the same email address uh but other than that they're very different and yes that's because they are actually not in the same culture as you if we wanted to sort of be forward looking about this so you know having identified that culture um is this sort of nebulous thing that's hard to change

32:29Professor Benjamin Laker: it's hard to evolve but the demonstrating behavior change is one of the ways to at least increase trust, increase the sort of levels of respect. What other advice, either when you're teaching this stuff or when you chat into organisations, what other advice would you put in front of them about them trying to either reinvent where they are right now or re-energise their approach? What practical steps would you advise? One of the things that came out in the article really

33:01Bruce Daisley: was about opaqueness. and if a leadership team has to make decisions and that might be difficult decisions let's say redundancies if the information and the supporting judgments around why that needs to happen is very transparent what we find is that people are much more likely to accept and think okay I understand how you have a right at that decision. But often, how the executive arrive at a decision is opaque, and it's not explained. And it could be, for example, why this person was hired over this person. It might not be clear, but this is what we thought. This is what we saw in this individual.

33:44Bruce Daisley: Why we decided to merge this team, or why this M &A. It could be anything. It could be something micro. Why we decided to change the menu or whatever. But if there's a justification, it doesn't have to be long, but just something around, well, this was our thinking. We find that it can really do wonders for organizations then to feel more trusting and thinking, okay, that was the information they used. That's a fair, objective explanation. Perhaps I wouldn't agree with it. However, that information, I can absolutely see why you would arrive at the conclusion that you did. It now demystifies the idea that perhaps there was some cyber nepotism or indeed some opaqueness that people wish to keep hidden.

34:36Bruce Daisley: And you see this, for example, in sports at the moment, say in English football, the idea around video assistant referee. whenever there are big decisions what as consumers of the sport really wish to see is can you explain the decision making and if you do not wish to explain the decision making conclusions are then drawn to say there is something foul at play here but if an individual is happy to come out and explain this is why the decision was taken everybody says well okay i might not agree with that but that's fantastic i have the information i can understand why it was transparent and why you concluded what you did.

35:14Bruce Daisley: I can't ask for more than that. There's an interesting paradox there, isn't there?

35:18Professor Benjamin Laker: For me, when I hear you say that, it sort of brings to mind, I saw the new mayor of New York was describing that, as he can see it, the job is communication and explaining, trying to be transparent about difficult decisions you've made and being the explainer-in-chief. But there's an interesting paradox because that's comms. What you've described to me is that comms does have a role in culture, but it's kind of explaining actions rather than as this sort of peacocking gesture. So, you know, the thing that we've done here is we've said that culture change isn't a comms thing. But I guess what we've come to is that comms has definitely still got a role to play, but it might be demonstrating why the specific and tangible actions that we've taken are the ones we've taken.

36:15Bruce Daisley: Yes, and I think the comms builds the trust. it allows people to have trust in those institutions and i think you see this with governments as well they're having to tackle the same type of issue because of public trust at an all-time low communicating the why and almost pulling back the curtain and explaining well this is the data that we're using to make these types of decisions when the trust is there it would then be consistent with a lack of peacocking because you often find that with with that because people are trying to either shift a narrative or spin a narrative or distract or say look over here you know this is our successes we're actually right over the other side there's not so yes cons is is huge in the trust rebuild phase and that might come first but also it could come at towards the end of a of a cultural change where you're then explaining this is how we measured it and this is how we are looking to maybe go go forward you've had

37:16Professor Benjamin Laker: involvement in government at consulting and advice on sort of how work's evolving and and that's a rapidly changing area right now to in sort of wrapping up and starting to come to the end i'd love your perspective of how you perceive work is going to change in the next five years and and how you would seek to advise first government and then individuals how to

37:42Bruce Daisley: how to navigate that it's definitely a very interesting time it depends who you talk to in terms of ai i'm of the camp that i don't think we are that close to a singularity and i think because of the way that genitive ai specifically is essentially built i'm skeptical about it being ever close to agi but for for technical reasons however there's definitely an appetite from organizations to automate a lot of work and that might mean a lot of jobs as well various technological shifts have happened before and many jobs that are undertaken today could not have even been conceptualized 10 20 20 50 years ago so there will always be jobs One of the things that I think people are not acutely appreciative of is how much their job contributes to their identity.

38:41Bruce Daisley: And they may not recognize it. So, for example, it can be explicit. So if you're a pilot, you introduce yourself to someone. Say, hi, I'm a pilot. It's very clear that your job is your identity. And when you're retired, hi, I'm a retired pilot. I mean, at that point, it's not really useful to know that up front. It's actually, okay, watch your name and maybe what you enjoy doing. But it's such a strong identity marker that it still lingers. But for other people, although they might not introduce themselves as, you know, hi, I'm a data scientist or whatnot, but it gives them such a contribution to their own identity.

39:19Bruce Daisley: while jobs may change a lot of people the threat of ai even if they know it won't replace their job i think what's actually happening is the identity marker is under threat so if you currently have a skill or job that requires maybe it requires some training or education levels and you start to recognize oh my goodness uh claude or chat gbt can actually now do that what does that mean for me? It's not to say that you might lose your job, but now suddenly skills that you thought of as rare can be automated. So for individuals who've had their self-worth and their status and their identity wrapped up in terms of the employment that they do, this can be a real shaker.

40:06Bruce Daisley: And of course, in the past, people might have derived their identity from their role in the community, perhaps a religious group, or it may be extended family, But because a lot of these identity markers have been eroded, work now becomes so important for people to have self-efficacy, self-identity, that any challenge to it, of which AI is a big proponent of, is going to be very difficult. So governments need to really think about this. And for individuals, let's imagine a utopia sense. OK, and if you listen to Elon Musk, I try not to. But if you do, he would say that this is something that you shouldn't worry about retirement because everyone's going to be paid universal basic income.

40:55Bruce Daisley: Now, a lot of people are worried about that because you think, well, what am I going to do with my life? You know, if suddenly now I don't have to work, but everything is provided for me. It's a sense of dread. It's not a utopian sense. And that's because your identity mark has been removed. So that is the big thing for government. it's going to have to start thinking about how do you have a fulfilling, meaningful life if identity markers are removed? And then for individuals, it's then the same question, but for them at a micro level, it's almost thinking, okay, am I willing to accept that a job is just a job?

41:32Bruce Daisley: Even if I went to university for it, even if I've studied years, even if I've spent 20, 30 years in this career, can I accept that a job is a job and that there are other things outside of it that could be a way that I can channel my identity, whether that be a hobby, whether that be family, whether that be my garden, other types of things that without that, the mental health of enormous groups of people will suffer.

42:01Professor Benjamin Laker: Yeah, because even if it's an illusion, the idea that we've got social mobility and the idea that through work, work is this vehicle that can allow you to elevate your position in society. If we move to a system where maybe the first generation you get away with this, but in the second generation of this, the people's position in society is now locked in. You're effectively in a caste where you are born to something, you can't aspire to something, this is your position. then I think removing that semi-illusory idea of social mobility immediately transforms the notion that what it means to be part of a society.

42:47Professor Benjamin Laker: Like if your position is bestowed upon you at birth, then it fundamentally changes our relationship, not only with work, but with the whole of society.

42:57Bruce Daisley: It's very damaging. It's very damaging. And often, for a lot of people, there's this race to retirement of, I cannot wait to retire. And this is the things I'm going to do when you retire. And of course, you get to retirement and you speak to individuals who have. And after the first week, they want to do something. I can't just be here. I've got to volunteer. I need to do various things. And you see, imagine if you then brought that forward 30 years or 40 years. there is not enough yet created outside of the workplace that will provide fulfillment for the mass of people there might be some individuals who are outside this curve but the notion that you can be anyone you want to be and you can do anything you want to do if you remove work how is that achievable and at the moment governments do not because they've never had to actually figure this out but through the history of time typically the psychological contract has been the provider of that and if you remove that then um it's a huge challenge not many people yet have realized this because they're more looking at the benefits of a ubi and that's to say even that a ubi would be payable because the question then becomes who would even pay it so you might get the first years but then after that who is continuously picking up the bill in order to fund.

44:20And then if you go down

44:22Bruce Daisley: particularly that line of inquiry, I don't think there's a good ending.

44:27Professor Benjamin Laker: But that's the only time that you ever see sort of the beneficence of Elon Musk saying that the world should have a universal basic income is somewhere in the future. Right now, he doesn't seem remotely altruistic in the way he wants to hoard his money. I guess the only thing about the idea that work might be automated in the short term, and there was someone in the headlines last week saying that all office jobs would be automated in 18 months. And then you scratch below the surface and you ask, oh, this is the guy who's bringing us Outlook and Teams, and it doesn't seem as convincing. So, you know, maybe work will be automated, but I wouldn't expect Microsoft to do it in the short term.

45:08Bruce Daisley: No, and I saw recently someone talking about, I think it was the latest version of Claude and what it was going to do. it's going to put all of these people out. And then someone reminded me, there are many organizations, big banks in the UK and in Europe that are still using fax machines. So do we really think, even if there was sentience in terms of some of these AI applications, how long would it take for implementation? Because the fax machine has been dormant for almost forever and it's still being used. So the world is not perhaps as quick and first moving in terms of what some of the first movies would like it to be.

45:51Professor Benjamin Laker: Benjamin, I've loved the conversation. I had high hopes because I'd love that article so much and I've linked to the article in the show notes, but I was really grateful for the sort of the depth of the conversation and I've got the sense that themes of culture are never simple and you're never going to solve it, but I think being honest about the challenges is probably the important first step.

46:15Bruce Daisley: Totally. and honestly just goes a long way within organizations i think there are many people who work for companies that recognize that because of the times that we are in perhaps they are even fortunate not to be uh within crisis and so for an organization to exist that is itself a win the only thing then more than that is just transparency can we just be honest about why we do things and if certain things are wanted but either it can't be afforded or because there's reasons the honesty itself is highly valuable and it doesn't actually cost an organization anything in terms of monetary value to just be transparent and honest and yet the value on it in terms of how it will make people feel the culture that it will then subsequently manifest is priceless.

47:08Bruce Daisley: And yet companies will spend a lot of money trying to chase the benefits of what a transparent culture would be rather than just paying the nominal fee of just being honest and transparent with their people.

47:20Professor Benjamin Laker: Love it. Thank you so much. I'm really grateful for your time.

47:23Bruce Daisley: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

47:29Professor Benjamin Laker: Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant. Let me share with you why smart finance leaders turn to Bill. They know that clarity isn't just helpful, it's strategic. As the intelligent finance platform, Bill uses AI to automate the busy work for nearly half a million businesses so they can focus on intentional growth. Eliminate the friction and start scaling with the proven choice. Visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert about automating your business finances and get a$250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply.

47:59Professor Benjamin Laker: See offer page for details. There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's The Drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new, handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now, get it all, buy one, get one 50 % off during the semi-annual LiveWell sale. From crushing workouts to leveling up your nutrition and everything in between, get the best deals on the latest innovations. All the newness is all on sale right now during the LiveWell sale On the Drop by GNC.

48:59Bruce Daisley: risk-free for 60 days.

49:05Professor Benjamin Laker: Thank you to Professor Laker. I really loved that discussion and actually sort of went to places that left me sort of reflecting and thinking for a long while afterwards. That universal basic income thing is no doubt going to be a big theme for how we navigate work and society in the next few years. So it's just interesting to think about those things up front Now, as ever, if you liked that, the best way to get more of things like this is to sign up to the newsletter and you'll see a link to that in the show notes. I've been Bruce Daisley. Thank you for your company today. I'll see you next time.

49:48Professor Benjamin Laker: Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant. Let me share with you why smart finance leaders turn to Bill. They know that clarity isn't just helpful, it's strategic. As the intelligent finance platform, Bill uses AI to automate the busy work for nearly half a million businesses so they can focus on intentional growth. Eliminate the friction and start scaling with the proven choice. Visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert about automating your business finances and get a$250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply.

50:19Professor Benjamin Laker: See offer page for details. There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's The Drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new, handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now, get it all, buy one, get one 50 % off during the semi-annual LiveWell sale. From crushing workouts to leveling up your nutrition and everything in between, get the best deals on the latest innovations. All the newness is all on sale right now during the LiveWell sale On the Drop by GNC.

51:19Bruce Daisley: risk-free for 60 days.