The more you talk about culture, the less people believe you
Today’s conversation is with Professor Benjamin Laker, someone I’ve long admired for his cutting edge work on the evolution of culture. His article on Meeting Free Days is probably the piece of research I’ve shared the most in the last 5 years.
Laker is Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, which is part of the University of Reading. As well as writing multiple bestselling books on work like Too Proud to Lead and Job Crafting, he’s also published dozens of articles in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. He’s worked with government helping to develop policy on work and it’s evolution.
I could have chatted to Benjamin about dozens of things but I specifically wanted to dive into a sensational piece he wrote in Harvard Business Review at the end of last year about changing culture inside of organisations.
Along the way he mentions several big thinkers on culture and I’ve linked to them in the transcript. We talk about the role of leader as explainer in chief, how communications needs to play a role but that ‘culture isn’t a campaign’.
As Laker is an advisor to governments we end with a discussion of the medium term effects of a Universal Basic Income meaning the end of work as a route to social mobility and the societal consequence of that.
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Daisley: 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.
Benjamin Laker: Thanks for having me here. Benjamin Laker, I’m 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 inside organisations and matrix work to really understand how work can be not just productive, because clearly companies want that, but also meaningful for those who undertake it and bring themselves into work every day.
Bruce Daisley: And so big picture question, but when you’re thinking about workplace culture, what do you understand workplace culture to be?
Benjamin Laker: 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 at 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.
Bruce Daisley: I wonder if, like, I’ve always got this perspective. I’ve worked in some British organizations, I’ve worked in some American organisations and it’s really strikes me that there are lost in translation elements 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, sort of a flow chart. It’s like the Highway Code of how the, the company operates. When you chat to most Europeans their company culture, they speak about something that’s far less rational and far more emotional. They describe how it feels around here rather than the norms, the practices, the handbook. Do you recognize that distinction? And, and, and if, if yes or not, I’d just be interested in how you would sort of evolve that or change that.
Benjamin Laker: 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 the, 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 us as a national differences.
And that could be things like power, distance, attitudes to work, religious culture, but it could simply be as more in the nuance that you’ve referred to, which I think is the difference between us and European differences might be the, 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 tendencies,they are much more likely to have individuals who have implicitly been exposed to socialist ideas. Things like healthcare, paternity leave, maternity leave extended (in that regard, much more so say than the 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 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 in, in comparison to say extended or shared maternity slash paternity leave for 12 months.
Bruce Daisley: And by the very nature of that then do you feel that the American approach is more profitable? Let me ask you this. Do you think that this is all an, an indulgence of business that have you in your work seen a straight line between better culture and better business success?
Benjamin Laker: I think it depends what the definition of 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. 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 X, Y, Z, 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 other conditionalities, but here is the salary that you will work for and typically salaries in the US outpace some within in within Europe, you are then able as a worker, as part of the psychological contract to either accept those conditions or not. And I feel that even in an environment where there are say stripped back benefits rather than just mood admiration, 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 what Hofstede and Mintzberg might then describe as, say the the implicit culture. Which is not a espoused, and there’s an inconsistency then between both.
Bruce Daisley: It’s really interesting ’cause what you seem to be describing to me is the difference between an individualistic culture where 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 European side say, but I think we, we see this in other places than Europe. By the very nature of culture, I perceive it to be collective but the ideais that we would have an in 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. We might see individual targets rather than collective targets. We might see management of people based on whether they accomplish 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, through those different perspectives of culture?
Benjamin Laker: It could entirely, although the counterpoint would be that perhaps the American model. It is more renowned for innovation for those reasons, because essentially you are 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 AI conversations are being had, where 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, in regard to innovation and entrepreneurialism, if a founder, which is to start a business, it’s just the idea probably becomes before the setting of culture where it’s 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 and just saying, this is the app, this is the I 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.
Bruce Daisley: You wrote this fabulous article with a few other 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, that article you talk about why culture change programs don’t really work and the thing that I really took from it is that most cultural change programs are communication. know, they’re just changing messaging and that if there’s any way to think about culture, it’s behaviour. And, you know, it’s a bit like at, at the start of the year we see all these books about habits and trying to change our individual patterns of behaviour and culture is just like a collective habit, really. It’s rituals, it’s things that organisations do. And so of course, communication isn’t going to work with that. Is that my take on that correct. Is that how you see the most cultural change programs fail because they’re comms plans.
Benjamin Laker: Yes, exactly that. And actually the working title of the article up until it was published I think was something like the more you talk about culture, the less people believe you. So it very much was a communications piece. 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 anything really, whether that’s an individualistic habit, like for example, you want to I’m trying to stop drinking too much Diet Coke companies might want to change logistics or supply chain or behavioural 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 behaviours 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 are 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, what does that actually mean?
And what are you doing differently? Rather than just simply saying that, and to drill in to think about what changes you might need to undertake as an organisation would be quite difficult. ’cause it could be nuanced or it could be ambiguous. Therefore, it’s difficult to communicate, so you only are going to communicate what people easily understand.
And that assumption is that those things are the cultural change, which is not true.
Bruce Daisley: Yeah, because the, 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 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 behavior of groups.
Benjamin Laker: Yes, and I think you will find that in a lot of these organisations. You are already quite up against it because of previous initiatives. And so there’s very much this idea of here we go again. Another document or another round table. 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 changes as a result. This is repetition of that. So for a lot of these organisations, in order even starting put 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. 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 is true, then we have the 72%.
Bruce Daisley: 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. aren’t the crowd at a wedding waiting for the speeches to say anything to gift you a laugh.
Benjamin Laker: no.
Bruce Daisley: They are deeply cynical,
Benjamin Laker: Yes.
Bruce Daisley: And potentially uncooperative.
Benjamin Laker: very much and 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 a lot of these individuals are quite burned out or indeed burned from prior negative experiences. And so it is 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? And that’s the challenge.
Bruce Daisley: 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, if leaders say ‘We need to be saving money this quarter’, and then they see the senior leaders going off on business class flight or luxury trip somewhere, they immediately think, okay, 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, how do you perceive it? Where, what I’m really interested is where the, the pitfalls are and where the successes are really.
Benjamin Laker: It is 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, but there is a danger. Therefore, thinking that the loneliness of the role means you have no proximity to other people in reality is everybody’s watching you.
Every email you send is being analysed. Everything that you do, every conversation that you have you should really assume that conversation is then replayed and it’s going round the team. And so if there’s the slightest inconsistency that is going to be noticed, 10 x. 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 inconsistency 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 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 are 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 are being 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.
Bruce Daisley: You go on and talk about when these things work effectively is not when people change the set of slogans on the wall or values, or they, they do a communication campaign, trust goes up when people witness leadership changes. When, when people witness changes of behaviour of the leadership that effectively ‘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 the, people would even notice that the, the actions had changed.
Benjamin Laker: Yeah. And I think it’s about, and we specifically wrote at some point, I dunno if it made the final cut, but culture is not a campaign. And often it is in many persons ideas. But what we try to say is no it’s not a campaign because some of these changes should exist not just within the confines and wrapped up in a nice flow, some 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. So it could be certain members of a hiring committee that are specifically looking to hire individuals or appoint those to posts and the.
Overarching rhetoric is we are 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 organisations that we studied, we actually saw leaders recognise this, weren’t asked to do 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. And so that was a good example. And when some of the persons we talked about that they thought, okay, 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.
Bruce Daisley: I’ve seen you talk about sort of one of the biggest problems for businesses is hubris and, and sort of overconfidence and culture’ one of the areas that we can fall out of this where culture quite often can be grounds for 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, that the pitfall of culture being shaped by grandiosity. Actually rather than thinking about the realities of behavior change, we think about words stylings and positioning.
Benjamin Laker: Yeah, 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, you 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 the company can hubristly say our culture is better than our competitors. It’s quite a statement in itself because it would infer that they have ownership over it. But actually how can you really, if individuals wish to have certain orientation that they will have that in the same regard.
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 actually no. The government doesn’t own the culture of the people. It’s owned by the manifestation of the people.
But yet in organisations we think somehow it’s the ownership of the companies. It’s their intellectual property. But 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 are inside the organisation now become unacceptable.
And that’s not to say that one group was wrong or one’s right, ’cause 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.
Bruce Daisley: That’s really striking that to a country. You know, the idea that anyone from the king to the Prime Minister could stand up and describe our culture is, would be re regarded as overreach, and yet organisations are very willing to do it. And, it makes me think as well of the Edelman Trust Index where we’re seeing currently that there’s a reducing amount of trust in our organisations and it suggests that that plays a role. But what you’ve described to me there then is that culture effectively feels like group identity, where the group has some degree of ownership over the identity, and that might explain then if the employees don’t feel a shared identity with the bosses. It’s where you feel this cultural breach, so that a on and 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, and I wonder if then, like what you’re describing is actually culture is about group identity.
Benjamin Laker: A lot of it will be because in order to have culture, the members of the culture have to have some shared identity. 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, ’cause of their shared experiences and their attitudes and the conditions of which they’re working, it’s manifesting something different.
And so you might then have multiple cultures existing within one entity, which is very often what you will what you will have. I think it was Mintzberg who talked about, say the operator’s 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 and 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 yeah, of course they would have completely different cultures. And of course now in today’s world, we want to have a singular culture within, inside an organisation. But you were then, like you said, you feel jarred when you start to think I don’t really believe that leader X is aligned.
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 to us and then you realise not many other than we both come into work for the same door other than that, and we might have the same email address.
But other than that, they’re very different. And yes, that’s because they are actually not in the same culture as you.
Bruce Daisley: If we wanted to sort of be forward looking about this, so, you know, having identified the culture. Is this sort of nebulous thing that’s hard to change. It’s hard to evolve, but the demonstrating behavior change is one of the ways to at least increase trust, increase the, the sort of levels of respect.
What other advice, either when you’re teaching this stuff or when you sort of you’re chatting to organisations, what other advice would you. Put in front of them about them trying to either where they are right now or reenergise their approach. What, what practical steps would you advise?
Benjamin Laker: One of the things that it came out in the article really 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 ofte how 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, or why we decided to merge this team, or why this M&A could be anything, it could be even 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 this was our, this is our thinking. We find that it can really do wonders for organisations 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, that people wish to to keep. Hidden. And you see this, for example, in sports at the moment say in 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 fo at play here. But if an individual is happy to come out and explain this is why. The decision was taken. Everybody says 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. I can’t ask for more than that.
Bruce Daisley: There’s an interesting paradox there, isn’t there? 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, telling, trying to be transparent about difficult decisions you’ve made and sort of being the explainer in chief, but there’s an interesting paradox because that’s comms so what you’ve described to me is that 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, the thing that we’ve done here is we’ve said that culture change isn’t a comms thing. I guess what we’ve come to is that comms has definitely still got a role to play, but it might be why the specific and tangible actions that we’ve taken are the ones we’ve taken.
Benjamin Laker: 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 and at all time low, communicating the why and almost pulling back the curtain and explaining 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 that, it’s because people are trying to either shift a narrative or spin a narrative or distract or say, look over here, this is our successes. But actually right over the other side there’s not. So yes, commss is huge in the trust rebuild phase. And that might come first, but also it could come at towards the end of a cultural change where you are then explaining. This is how we measured it, and this is how we are looking to maybe go forward.
Bruce Daisley: You’ve had involvement in government at co consulting and advice on sort of how work’s evolving and, and that’s a, a rapidly changing area right now to, 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 government and then individuals how to navigate that.
Benjamin Laker: It is definitely a very interesting time, and it depends who you talk to in terms of AI. I am of the camp that I don’t think we are that close to a singularity, and I think because of. The way that generative AI specifically is essentially built, I’m skeptical about it being ever closed to AGI, but for technical reasons.
However, there’s definitely a appetite from organisations 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, and they may not recognise this.
For example, it can be explicit. So if you’re a pilot and you introduce yourself to someone, say, hi, I’m a pilot. So it’s very clear that your job is your identity. And when you’re retired, hi, I’m a retired pilot. At that point it doesn’t, it’s not really useful to know that upfront. It’s actually okay.
What’s 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, hi, I’m a data scientist or whatnot, but it gives them such a contribution to their own identity. And 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 a job that requires, maybe it requires some training or education levels, and you start to recognise, oh my goodness Claude or Chat GPT 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.
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. 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 gonna be very difficult. So governments need to really think about this. And for individuals, let’s imagine a utopia sense.
Okay? And if you listen to Elon Musk (I try not to, but if you do) he would say that this is something that’s you shouldn’t worry about retirement because everyone’s going to be paid universal base income. Now a lot of people are worried about that. ’cause you think what am I going do with my life?
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 marker is being removed. So that is the big thing for government. It’s gonna 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 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 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.
Bruce Daisley: Yeah. because even if it’s an illusion, the, the idea that we’ve got social mobility and the, the idea that work is this vehicle that can allow you to, to elevate your position in society. And 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 system. You are born to something, you can’t aspire to something else. This is your position. Then I think removing that. Semi illusory idea of social mobility transforms the notion that what it means to be part of a society. Like if position is bestowed upon you at birth, then it fundamentally changes our relationship, not only with work, but with the, the whole of society.
Benjamin Laker: It is very damaging. It’s very damaging and often for a lot of people you, there’s this race to retirement. Oh, I cannot wait to retire and this is the things I’m gonna do. When you retire, and of course you get to retirement and you speak to individuals who have, and after the first week. If they wanna do something, it’s I can’t just be this, I’ve gotta volunteer.
I need to do various things. And 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 it’s a huge challenge. Not many people yet have realised this because they’re more looking at the benefits of what 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 and then if you go down particular, that line of inquiry, I don’t think this is a good ending.
Bruce Daisley: Hmm, well, that’s it. The, the only time that you ever see sort of the beneficence of Elon Musk saying that the world should have 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 about the idea that work might be automated in the short term. There was someone in the headlines last week saying that all 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’s doesn’t seem as convincing. So you know, may maybe work will be automated, but I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to do it in the short term.
Benjamin Laker: No I, and I saw recently someone talking about, I think it was the latest version of Claude and what it was gonna do, and it was gonna put all of these people out. And then someone reminded me, there are many organisations. Big banks in the UK and Europe that are still using fax machines. So do we really think, even if, even if there was sentence 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, as quick and first moving in terms of what some of the first movers would like it to be.
Bruce Daisley: Benjamin, I’ve loved the conversation. I I had high hopes ’cause I’d loved your articles so much and I’ve linked the article in the show notes. But I’m just really grateful for the, 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 gonna solve it. But I think being honest about the challenges is probably the important first step.
Benjamin Laker: Totally and honestly just goes a long way within organizations. I think there are many people who work for companies that recognise that because of the times that we are in, perhaps they are even fortunate not to be within crisis. And so for an organisation 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.
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.
Bruce Daisley: Love it. Thank you so much. I’m really grateful for your time
Benjamin Laker: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
