Future Work/Life is my newsletter in which I explore ideas focused on the future of work and how to build legendary companies & careers. If you find it interesting, please share it!
A quick thank you to the team and students on Henley Business School’s Global Executive MBA course, who I met last week and who are subscribed to this newsletter.
What a beautiful setting and a great group of people to discuss building a high-performance culture and work/life with.
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Being Open-Minded
How to live a fulfilled life? A question I’m always up for tackling. But someone who I never suspected would give me a fresh perspective on the subject is comedian Jimmy Carr.
If you’re British, you know Jimmy. If not, he’s one of the UK’s most successful comedians, famous for uncompromising and sardonic one-liners. Which is why it’s tough to imagine him handing out positive life advice.
My talk at Henley started with the encouragement to be open-minded - about new opportunities, changes in how we work, about others, and yourself. Well, Jimmy Carr’s conversation with Chris Williamson on the fantastic Modern Wisdom podcast typifies why this is so important for various reasons.
Not least, because you never really know someone until you spend time listening to what they have to say. It’s true of Chris - former Newcastle nightclub promoter turned Love Island contestant, now the host of an incredibly successful podcast on which he’s evolved into a kind of modern philosopher. And it’s true of Jimmy, who offers plenty of wisdom of his own.
Expect to learn what the most important question to ask yourself is, why you have probably been thinking about luck incorrectly, what the two great myths in life are, the most common misconceptions about being famous, how to survive a cancellation attempt, what kind of relationship we should have with our inner-critic, how to enjoy the passage of time in a graceful way and much more...
Leadership
One group of people who aren’t so open-minded?
Two-thirds of CEOs think staff will return to office five days a week, survey finds
Yes, KPMG’s survey of CEOs ‘revealed’ that CEOs not only “predicted a full return to in-office working by 2026” but that “an overwhelming majority (87%) of global leaders, and 83% of UK executives, believed that financial rewards and promotion opportunities could be linked in future to office attendance.”
There’s not much to say on this other than to quote advertising legend Don Draper:
“Change is neither good nor bad. It simply is.”
It seems that there still plenty of bosses that can neither either accept nor take advantage of the fact things have changed. Those that do will be the eventual winners.
Remote Work
Why are some bosses so desperate to get people back in? Reports like this one from SAP Concur (via WorkLife) probably don’t help.
Their WFA (work-from-anywhere) research shows that one in five employees have misled their employers on where they’re working from. 69% of HR leaders surveyed for the report believe this is going to need to some new process being put in place - not least ensuring that businesses and individuals’ tax status is correctly covered.
The biggest issue with all of this, though, is trust.
And for those who argue that employees are breaking trust, you have to wonder why they feel like they need to fib in the first place.
CLUE: It’s a vicious cycle.
SOLUTION: Treat this as an opportunity to redesign how people work (sorry, I’m sounding like a broken record here).