Podcast Summary: Work For Humans
Episode: Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do | Daniel M. Cable, Revisited
Host: Dart Lindsley
Guest: Dan Cable, Professor of Organizational Behavior, London Business School
Date: December 23, 2025
Main Theme and Purpose
This episode explores how organizations can unlock employee passion and energy using insights from neuroscience and organizational research. Dan Cable and Dart Lindsley discuss the "seeking system" in the human brain—the urge to explore, learn, and make an impact—and how modern management practices can either suppress or activate this intrinsic drive. They examine practical, evidence-based techniques to design work environments where people are truly "alive at work," resulting in happier employees and better business outcomes.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. The “Seeking System” in the Brain ([03:11])
- Definition: An evolved, innate mechanism in the brain urging humans to explore and seek out new resources and learning opportunities.
- Why it matters: When activated, this system releases dopamine, driving curiosity, enthusiasm, and positive emotions.
- Business Relevance: Companies benefit greatly when employees are engaged in learning and adapting—qualities that the seeking system fosters.
“If there is a hardwired bit of biology and chemistry that makes people enthusiastic and want to learn, that's kind of what companies need these days... Turns out we all have that button. It’s just that most big companies are set up to shut that off instead of switch it on.”
— Dan Cable (04:45)
2. Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic Wellbeing ([06:19])
- Hedonic happiness: Short-term pleasure (e.g., eating chocolate, getting a massage).
- Eudaimonic wellbeing: Deep, meaningful satisfaction, often associated with challenge, purpose, and personal growth (e.g., raising children, persisting through meaningful work).
- At Work: True fulfillment comes from meaningful challenge, not just from momentary pleasure.
“A lot of having kids basically sucks... But somehow it feels meaningful... meaningful joy might be higher. You might die happier having done all this really bad stuff.”
— Dan Cable (06:53)
3. Activating the Seeking System at Work ([10:11])
Dan Cable's research points to three evidence-based factors that energize employees:
a. Experimentation and Serious Play
- Encourage risk-free, playful experimentation.
- Psychological safety is crucial—employees need to feel safe to experiment and fail (Amy Edmondson’s research).
- Hands-on, low-risk scenarios (e.g., LEGO Serious Play, prototyping) encourage learning and innovation.
“Learning feels a lot like failure in the middle, but leaders hate it... These are words I’ve almost pruned out of my vocabulary because... as soon as you throw ‘play’ out there, it’s almost like an allergic reaction.”
— Dan Cable (11:09)
b. Personalizing Purpose
- Employees need to see how their work impacts others, even in small ways (e.g., a chef seeing the person they’re preparing food for).
- “Purpose” should be grounded in everyday cause-and-effect, not just lofty mission statements.
“The purpose here is: I see my impact on the world. I see that that person, I’m making breakfast for them. I’ve got lots of studies and stories to talk about there.”
— Dan Cable (44:15)
c. Using Unique Strengths
- Let employees highlight and use what they do best.
- Recognizing individual strengths leads to greater belonging and energy.
- Most big organizations historically suppress individuality for uniformity, but that stifles engagement and creativity.
“It’s like an energy source that's right under the skin. You just need to plug in.”
— Dan Cable (13:31)
4. The Wipro Experiment on Onboarding ([14:38])
- Design: 700+ call center employees, randomized into three onboarding styles:
- Traditional/job-based
- Pride-based (about company values)
- Individualized/strengths-based (“I want to know more about you. Who are you at your best?”)
- Results: The individualized group had 30% less turnover and 11% higher customer satisfaction—no changes to pay, job design, or rules.
- Key Insight: Recognizing people for their unique strengths from day one drives retention and performance.
“We were able to reduce quitting by over 30% in that third group. And we were able to make customers 11% happier...”
— Dan Cable (16:59)
5. The Dark Side: Traditional Performance Management and Control ([22:23])
- KPIs as “seeking system Kryptonite”: Fixed controls and rigid performance metrics often become outdated quickly and stifle experimentation.
- Fear and Uniformity: Management by fear and uniformity is a holdover from the industrial age—rewarding sameness, not adaptive creativity.
- Efficiency Over Innovation: Organizations push employees to operate at the red line, leaving no slack for play or learning.
“If we set the KPIs in January, by June, they're kind of extraneous. And by next January... we’re running a different business model. It’s a really hard game to play.”
— Dan Cable (25:13)
“Fear is the Kryptonite of the seeking system.”
— Dart Lindsley (26:41)
6. Leadership That Unlocks the Seeking System ([31:09])
- Humble Leadership: Leaders should set direction but be open and curious about how best to get there. Humility, vulnerability, and normalizing learning from failure are key.
- Discretionary Effort: The willingness of employees to go beyond what’s required comes from environments where they’re trusted and encouraged to explore.
- Building “Innovation in Every Seat”: Leaders empower people at every level to adapt, speak up, and spot better ways forward.
“A good soldier will just ignore reality and hit the KPIs. But they'll be destroying organizational value even while they're getting their stock price appreciation and bonuses. A worker that's willing to almost be an entrepreneur... that's discretionary effort.”
— Dan Cable (33:07)
7. Bias Against Creativity in Organizations ([34:51])
- Leaders and organizations often resist genuinely creative ideas, associating them with risk, loss of control, and even implicit criticism of past decisions.
- The safest path is “playing it safe,” but this leads to lethargy and missed opportunities.
“The first person that said the earth is not the center of the universe wasn’t treated real well. When you’re saying things that are outside the box... even if you’re right, you’re not always carried on the shoulders...”
— Dan Cable (35:18)
8. The Pitfalls of Role Profiles and Rewarding Sameness ([39:44])
- Rigid definitions of roles and over-standardization make it hard to recognize or reward employees who innovate or stretch beyond their official “box.”
- Self-imposed habits of efficiency can also stifle one’s own seeking system—individuals, not just companies, fall into these traps.
“I think I made myself into my own robot once... I shot off my own seeking system, basically. I think that I made myself an efficient but very dull version of myself that didn’t strive...”
— Dan Cable (40:23)
9. Making Purpose and Impact Tangible ([42:08–46:54])
- Employees crave direct feedback or evidence (“the click of a pen”) that their work matters.
- Examples: Thank-you notes, customer feedback, removing unnecessary work by connecting producers with users (Pentagon accounting team).
“One of the things I found... was thank you notes... for them, that was something they wanted to hold up as the detect that they had succeeded at their purpose of helping others.”
— Dart Lindsley (46:54)
10. The Future: Personalization and Scaling Purpose ([65:10])
- Companies face a tradeoff: How do you personalize work for each employee at scale?
- Managers (not systems alone) can and should design personalized experiences by tapping into individual strengths, values, and drivers.
“If you think about management as a technology, then it just works... And maybe for whatever reason I’m tripping over it, because I know this is like a 1950s distinction, but it’s that leadership versus management. It almost feels more like what’s needed is leadership instead of management...”
— Dan Cable (67:18)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On purpose in work:
"What we’re really looking for, it seems, is a story about how we have an impact on the world.”
— Dan Cable (42:35) -
On bad being stronger than good:
“There’s like Kahneman and Tversky have shown this risk aversion because, like, finding 10 pounds or $10 feels great, but it doesn’t feel as great as losing $10 or 10 pounds hurts.”
— Dan Cable (26:41) -
On leadership humility:
“A humble leader is one that doesn’t start with the assumption that he or she has the answer... but is prepared to set mission and develop common sense of purpose... and is better at listening.”
— Dan Cable (31:13) -
On self-robotization:
“I think I shot off my own seeking system, basically...”
— Dan Cable (40:23)
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [03:11] — The Seeking System Explained
- [06:19] — Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic Happiness
- [10:11] — Three Ways to Activate the Seeking System
- [14:38] — The Wipro Onboarding Experiment
- [17:26] — Psychological Safety and Experimentation
- [22:23] — The Problem with KPIs and Performance Management
- [31:09] — Humble Leadership and Discretionary Effort
- [34:51] — Bias Against Creativity in Organizations
- [39:44] — Pitfalls of Role Profiles; Overstandardization
- [42:08–46:54] — Making Purpose Tangible; Detects and Feedback
- [65:10] — Personalizing Work at Scale
Tone and Language Notes
Both Dart and Dan speak with candor, blending enthusiasm, curiosity, humor, and humility. They share personal anecdotes, reference classic research, and challenge conventional business wisdom in an accessible, human manner.
Conclusion
This episode cuts deeply into how and why people truly come alive at work. It calls on leaders to rethink performance management, embrace experimentation, recognize individual strengths, and personalize both purpose and feedback in order to harness the powerful seeking system inside us all. The science says: nurture curiosity and meaning, reject fear and excessive control, and you’ll build organizations where people love what they do.
Further Information
-
Find Dan Cable:
Twitter: @AnCable1
Website: dan-cable.com -
Book:
Alive at Work by Daniel M. Cable