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- [00:04]
A
Organizational purpose is a good thing, but it can also be wielded to say it's okay that we are burning out because look at all the impact we're making. And for one, I think that's just not true that we need to equate struggle with greatness. Secondly, I think it elevates the output of a business above the employee's experience because I often say customers bring a share of wallet, but employees bring a grand portion of their lives. And so to treat employees as input alone, I think does a huge disservice to the company, but also to those people. And so when we think about meaning, we often think about output. But when we think about fun, we think about the experience of being at work every day. Did I have fun today? And that's what I'm trying to elevate because businesses consume a huge portion of human days and I think those days should be well spent. I want people to be laughing at work. That's a pretty good metric. How many minutes did you spend laughing? Put that on your KPIs.
- [01:07]
B
Welcome to the Work for Humans podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. Today I'm talking with Bree Grof about her new book Today Was Fun. It's a book that pushes the reset button on expectations about work. There is no reason that work can't be be fun. About half of the things that make it unfun are self inflicted and we can just stop doing them. Let's take off the serious people costume. Let's stop the performative work if it doesn't contribute to outcomes. Take a nap. That's for you. Not just to recharge for more work. It's okay to feel emotions at work, have fun with work friends, wear stretchy pants and keep work in its place, which is a good part of life, but not your whole life. Bree is a former partner at SY Partners and a transformation expert who helps organizations lead through change. With a background in systems thinking and behavioral science, she works at the intersection of strategy, leadership and culture. All right, if you enjoy this episode, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And now here's my conversation with Brie Grof. Welcome back to Work for Humans.
- [02:26]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [02:27]
B
Dart, you've written a book. Today was fun and so much of the mood of the book is in the title. It's light, it's fast, it's fun. And I would say that the core thesis, if I was going to sum it up, it's a quote from you. Most work, Most Days should be fun.
- [02:51]
A
Yeah.
- [02:52]
B
How did you arrive at writing that book?
- [02:56]
A
First of all, I firmly believe that. I know it's true. I know work can be fun for a fact, because I've felt it, because I grew up seeing it. So in the broadest of senses, it was just something that I feel in my bones that I wanted to spread, which is what you put in a book. The most we can dive into later comes from me being a realist. And of course, everybody has hard days at work. And I never want people to feel like I'm shaming them into having fun, because that's no fun. So that's the grand thesis. The origin story of it is I grew up with two parents who had pretty good days at work, stressed, like all of us. But my mom was a kindergarten teacher. My dad was an elementary school principal. And I remember my mom would come home from work and she would say, I have the best days. And I thought, cool, work's gonna be great. I thought school was pretty fun. I'm gonna grow up. I'm gonna have these best days like my mom has, you know, I went into my dad's school to visit once in a while, and he's laughing with his colleagues and they're making jokes, and I'm like, oh, he hangs out with his friends. And so very early on, I was conditioned into believing that work is fun. And actually, in my first career was in education. I taught middle school math and high school math and physics. And there were many, many Fridays where I would feel sort of a comedown at the end of the week, like, oh, I have to wait till Monday to get back here and joke with my friends and make 13 year olds laugh and make corny jokes about trigonometry. I actually felt like, oh, it's the weekend. And so all of that hope and visceral experience that I had was very much in contrast then to when I made it into consulting. And now I am peeking into the work cultures of dozens of organizations, and people are not having the best taste. People are not having fun. They're stressed. They're working nights and weekends. They're all tied up in endless emails and messages. And it very much felt to me, on the one hand, yes, like a business problem, like, oh, engagement is down, therefore productivity is down, like the management consultant hat. But also, more so than that, it felt like an existential problem. Like, these people are wishing away their days. They're trying to get rid of Monday and get rid of Tuesday. That felt up there on the problems in the World right next to life expectancy, cancer. You know, there's ways that we physically shorten our lives, but there's also ways that we emotionally flatten our lives. And work is a big part of that. So I'm trying to make it more true, more possible for more people on more days to wake up and think happy Tuesday, Happy Wednesday, in the way that we often say Happy Friday.
- [05:58]
B
There's so much in that. There's so much in both reminding us that work can be fun. I often believe that people turn on the search engine in their head that looks for the bad. What you expect to see is often what you see.
- [06:15]
A
Yes.
- [06:16]
B
And so just reminding us that work can be fun. But I will tell you, there's a funny feeling I get reading the book, and it's something like this. It's not unlike the feeling I get when I see a dog.
- [06:31]
A
Awesome. Okay, I'm with you. So far.
- [06:34]
B
My blood pressure goes down. Scientists have shown this. In fact, I had Paul Zak on the show, and he's done all this studies on blood chemistry and cortisol and dopamine and oxytocin. And he says dogs have a greater effect than cats when it comes to your physiological response. But my physiological response to this book is, oh, that's a. It's like a relief.
- [07:01]
A
Aw.
- [07:02]
B
And the way that you frame it is important to it, which is most work. Most days should be fun. Because I sometimes read books about joy, about work, and I feel like I'm failing because I know that you use joy and fun sort of interchangeably. But joy, for me is a much harder thing to attain than fun. And so why did you pick fun specifically as the word?
- [07:28]
A
It is accessible. It is visceral, childlike in many ways. I like that it's immediately identifiable. You don't need to go to a dictionary definition or like a 5 point Likert scale survey to figure out if you're having fun. You can usually tell if you're having fun. I'm having fun right now. I'm excited. We're talking about interesting things. I also found people really know when they're not having fun. That is a very visceral feeling. And so I like the pureness of it. I do sometimes use the word joy less frequently. Obviously it's not on the COVID of the book, but I do distance myself a bit from the loftier words that we normally elevate when we think about what we're shooting for in business, aside from money. So things like purpose, meaning joy is a little bit adjacent There fulfillment. So all of those sorts of words. I agree with their dictionary definitions. It's nice for your work to do something and have meaning, but it's actually, I don't like them because I think they get hijacked by a culture of overwork. So when we start to think about sort of a mindset of struggle equals greatness, or nothing worth doing was ever easy, or you may be miserable for months, years on end at your job, but it's for a good cause or in the way that organizations. I do think organizational purpose is a good thing, but it can also be wielded to say it's okay that we are burning out because look at all the impact we're making. And for one, I think that's just not true, that we need to equate struggle with greatness. There's plenty of things that we can do that if you're skilled at them and you have the infrastructure, they're actually just not that hard and they produce value. Secondly, I think it elevates the output of a business above the employee's experience. And we're very used to this argument. And Dart, you're such a shining light in the world to say no, the employee experience is a product in and of itself and very, very important one. Because I often say customers bring a share of wallet, but employees bring a grand portion of their lives. And so to treat employees as input alone, I think does a huge disservice to the company, but also to those people. And so when we think about meaning, we often think about output, but when we think about fun, we think about the experience of being at work every day. Did I have fun today? And that's what I'm trying to elevate because businesses consume a huge portion of human life, of human days, and I think those days should be well spent. And so, in summary, I want people to be laughing at work. That's a pretty good metric. How many minutes did you spend laughing? Put that on your KPIs.
- [10:35]
B
Can you tell the story of the janitor and JFK?
- [10:40]
A
Yes. So this is a story that's bopped around leadership off sites and management consulting decks for a while now. And it goes like this. Former President JFK was visiting NASA and he was being given a tour through the building. He comes across a janitor mopping the floor. And he goes up to them and says, hi, I'm President Kennedy. So nice to meet you. What are you doing there? And the janitor replies, well, Mr. President, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. And then that's when the leadership team you're presenting to is like, ooh, Ah, yes. The power of purpose and being connected to something greater than yourself. So I told this story, and it does get those reactions. And then one day I was about to put it in a deck for a presentation. I'm pulling the slides over and I thought to myself, what? I don't actually like this story. I don't believe in it. And so it took me a hot second to think, bri, why does this really bother you? Actually, you've been playing along because it's so canonical, but why don't you like it? And I realized it was this. That story. It sends the message that our work is only worthwhile, meaningful, that our days are only spent well if we can connect them to a milestone of humanity. And if it's anything less than that, then you're just a janitor. But I thought, no, it's actually really important to have janitors. And not because it helps to put a man on the moon, but because in that building there's probably some guy named Joe working in communications or someone named Ann in engineering. And those humans work in that building every day. And it's nice for them to have clean floors. And I hope that they would see the janitor and say, hi, good morning. And that janitor feels pride in making that floor clean in that building, in that corner of the world for people that janitor actually knows. And that's important. That's more than enough. And then when I extrapolate that out, it's all of the professions that have that sort of human scaled impact, like teaching or nursing, where you as a 3D human, are standing in front of another 3D human and doing something in service of them that's so meaningful. And we don't have to feel like our time at work is only worthwhile if it's scalable, which is very much the message we get when we think about business growth. You want to have million, billion person scale. Well, simultaneously that devalues all of those human interactions. It turns us from humans into human resources that can be utilized at scale. So I don't tell that story anymore.
- [13:41]
B
I can say, because I've been a janitor, amazing. I spent a decade writing abstract expressionist prose, which nobody wants to read.
- [13:50]
A
I want to read it.
- [13:51]
B
And so you'd work at everything because you're not making any money. So I will say that the fun in that work was even less lofty than helping others. I liked the patterns that I could make on the carpet when I vacuumed because they were pretty. And I liked to make those patterns while I was listening to loud Tom Waits usually at that time, Heart Attack and Vine. And I liked making a shiny bathroom. Yeah, my urinals were amazing. And so was there any grand purpose? There wasn't. Were there things that I was proud of and things that were fun that nobody else in the world knew there were?
- [14:35]
A
Mm. First of all. Okay, can I just say, my urinals were perfect. Needs to go on your LinkedIn bio somewhere.
- [14:42]
B
They really were. They really were. I was good at my job.
- [14:45]
A
And also, there's so many ways to have fun at work. And I think your story illustrates that perfectly. I mentioned the people that smile. You know, I think people are a big part of it, but it's not the only part of it or doesn't even have to be part of it. Some people just get lit up by making something or doing something. It's like you're pretty patterns because your joy mattered. The fact that you looked at those patterns and were like, that's cool. I did that. That's plenty. And learning just because you're learning. There's so many ways to find fun at work that don't rest on this scale. Legacy notion. It can just be pretty carpets.
- [15:30]
B
You have a chapter on resisting the business case for joy. Can you expand on that?
- [15:36]
A
Yes. So I know you read all the articles that I read about employee engagement, and every last one of them will have a business case. And I totally get it. I've been a management consultant, sold this kind of work for a long time. And so the number of data points and slides and cases I've made for how employee engagement drops turnover, it supports engagement, supports productivity above all those things. At this point, I just want to take all that for granted. Yes, happy people are good for business, it's true. But also to me, it's not at all the point. The point is that the humans experiencing that employee engagement, their lives matter, their days matter, separate from their output into the organization. So I understand that obviously businesses are asking for any sort of investment. What's the ROI on this? But to me, low engagement is not a business issue. It's an existential issue, first and foremost, because when people are wishing away their weeks, when they're just trying to get to Friday, that's a problem that we're wasting human life. To me, that is a fundamental problem with how we have set up work. And I think leaders should care about it for that reason. Leaders, of course, are paid to care about the bottom line, but they should also be caring about whether they are good stewards of the days that employees are giving to them. And so when I talk about rest, the number of times I've heard rest is good for productivity blows my mind. And I just want to stop hearing about it again. You know, Olympic athletes, even, they have rest days. Like, great rest is good for performance, but even more rest is good because we're human beings. And it's a nice part of being a human. It's just fucking nice to wake up after a nap. I have that sentence verbatim in the book because it is. It's just nice to take a nap. That's plenty. I'm not taking a nap so that I can come back recharged. Which is a whole other argument about how businesses view rest as a means to an end as opposed to a human. Right.
- [17:59]
B
I loved that line. I laughed when I read that line and I was like, of course that's true. But recently I've been reading Emmanuel Kant and I've always thought was pretty opaque, but I found his formula for humanity. And it says it's okay to use people as a means to an end so long as you also recognize them as an end in themselves. And that's really what you're saying, which is that it is a moral question. And I would even argue that oftentimes every person in the company would agree with that sentiment. And yet we build companies that, when they function as a whole, do not. And it's partially because of that expectation that you're talking about, that we can't pitch any investment for any reason other than the bottom line.
- [18:56]
A
Right?
- [18:57]
B
We think we can't.
- [18:59]
A
Yeah. It's funny because that is true in many ways. And then once in a while I come across a leader who's actually. One of my first immersive long term consulting engagements was with a leader who whispered to me, can we just have a little more fun around here? She was obviously investing a lot of money in the engagement and a lot of it was around process and efficiency of this complex organization. But I love that moment because sometimes we forget that leaders are also humans who like, enjoy having a good time at work. They also want to have fun. And it feels so subversive to say, say that or to want that. Even when I recounted the story, I sort of whispered into the mic because that was my experience of how it happened. But leaders also want to have a good time. And I think if we believe that leaders are good people, I believe that for the most part, then we can believe that they also care about being good stewards of those human days.
- [20:04]
B
What's a fun day of work for you?
- [20:06]
A
Ooh. Honestly, at its very simplest, I want to be around people that I find interesting and funny and who I like hanging out with, and I want to be laughing with them. That's kind of it. Which does a disservice to the work itself. So I'm careful when I say that. It's just that, you know, I use the phrase in the book good laughs with good people. That is so important to me that even if work is hard and stressful and something we're making is not working and everything else is going wrong, if I'm around people that I like and we've laughed a little bit, that's still a good day of work. I often think about, if you're going out to dinner with others, if you like the people you're dining with and the food is crap, you probably still had a nice time. The reverse is not true. If you don't like the people you're with and the food was great, you. You probably did not have a good time. Now, if you like the people and the food is exceptional, then you've won. And so in my analogy here, it's you like your co workers and you find what you're working on interesting, and it's successful and challenging and all of those things. But first and foremost, this is a day of work for me, and I'm hanging out with you, Dart, and I like you and think you're fun and interesting. We're talking about interesting things. And so this is a really good day of work. And who knows what's in my inbox, Even if it's stressful things, I've already had a pretty good day.
- [21:33]
B
You have a line in the book, which I really liked, and maybe it's a chapter heading which is Even shoveling shit is fun if it's with the right people. There's a subtle difference between having fun with friends when you're not working and having fun with friends when you are. There's something that ties us together when we are all carrying the same thing forward.
- [21:57]
A
Yes.
- [21:58]
B
So it's a part of the context of the fun that I think makes the fun richer.
- [22:07]
A
Yeah.
- [22:08]
B
And I wonder if you experience that, which is this idea that what's holding us together in this room is this shared thing.
- [22:17]
A
Yes.
- [22:18]
B
Even when that thing that we're carrying is unpleasant, because sometimes it is. But even when that thing is exciting, it's still a part of the experience that I think it's a special spice that goes into it. I've been wondering if you experience that same thing.
- [22:33]
A
Oh, a thousand percent. I think of it in the way that when you watch kids play, they generally don't sit quietly in the sandbox and chat with each other. They are inclined to build together. So they are building a fort, building a sandcastle, pretending to do a little play, or pretend play they're building with Legos. It is almost as instinctual as it gets to do something together other than just sit around and chat. And so when we think about the workplace, it's just the same. It's really no different. I love building with other people because that is part of the fun. It's having a cool idea, and then other people are like, oh, that's such a cool idea. And then someone else saying, oh, and what if we did that? And I'm like, oh, my God, that's brilliant. And I never would have thought of that. And then we're building together, and then something. You know, I'm used the term building together loosely. It could be like your nurses in a hospital and you're helping a patient, you're collaborating on something and something goes wrong, and you're like, oh, what do we do? That is part of the fun. And it's similar to the way that. And this will sound extreme, but when people go to war together to fight, they don't call those people war colleagues. Those are war buddies.
- [23:54]
B
Yeah. Brothers and sisters.
- [23:56]
A
Right. When you're really in it with each other, as you said, when you are pushing something forward together, that is fertile ground for friendship, for camaraderie, all of those things. And so if someone were to ask me, should we just get rid of the work part and sit around and hang out all day, I'd say no. It's really fun to do something together, to build, because work is fundamentally joyful. It's fun to show off our skills. It's fun to make something for the world.
- [24:27]
B
I really think that's a key point and worth putting a point on it. Work should be a source of joy because it's fundamentally good.
- [24:36]
A
Yes.
- [24:37]
B
And that's something that. It's very easy to frame work as fundamentally bad and framing it as fundamentally good. I interviewed somebody once, not on the show, but for part of my research, and he was somebody who made robot parties. What that meant was that he would create events that involved people and robots that were fun.
- [25:01]
A
Oh, my God.
- [25:02]
B
But I asked him what was rewarding about it. And he said, first of all, he takes a group of people who he basically attracts through random ways who don't necessarily know anything about robotics, and together they spend four months building the robots. And he said, the really fun part there is working together and seeing them grow in their abilities and their skills. And he says, I don't really like the party, which is the output, right? I don't really like the party, he says, but I love the cast party, where afterwards we get together and we talk about how it worked. And so here's somebody who almost all of his joy in the work is not the output, right? How could I know if my work is even funnable?
- [25:51]
A
I use that question because the vast majority of the book is about how making your current situation more fun, or finding the joy in it, or seeing it where you didn't see it before growing it. But sometimes a role or a company, they're just not a good fit for you. Your skills, your preferences, your life. And so the first question I always want to ask before I'm like, you can do it. You can make it more. Is this just not a good setup at all? In the example that you shared? He didn't like the party and he didn't like the process. Then something's wrong. You have to like at least part of it. And so if something is really not a good fit for you, then you should leave. Easier said than done, because unemployment is also not fun. So you want to take that carefully. But also, I've seen so many people stay in roles where they're miserable simply because they feel like this default is all that's on offer. And so that's the gatekeeper question. If you haven't had fun in months, then find a new setup. If you've had bright spots along the way and it's been a little challenging, then I'm getting in with you, and we're going to figure out how to make your current situation more joyful.
- [27:06]
B
I sometimes struggle with fun versus satisfaction. Let me see if I can describe the difference. Fun comes and goes, and I can remember it. Satisfaction kind of smolders. It's like a banked fire where I can see something I did and it's lasting and I'm proud of it. Definitely not mutually exclusive, but I might be willing to have some not fun for satisfaction. And so in your cosmology, where does that fit?
- [27:41]
A
I have a literal response to that question and sort of a contextual response. The literal response is, we should have both satisfaction and fun. And when I think about fun at work. Oftentimes satisfaction is in many ways a prerequisite for the fun. I don't know too many people who don't care at all about what they're doing and are still having fun. Because I think for most people, that would feel, well, to give a tautology, unsatisfying, I guess. So my literal answer is I think both are important. And sometimes if you need to be erring on the side of satisfaction and not be laughing quite as much, yeah, maybe for a little while. That's my literal response. My response in the context of our corporate culture is that we are way on the end of the spectrum of valuing satisfaction over fun. And so therefore I am trying to bring that pendulum back, because what I see so often is companies, leaders in particular, touting all of the. This is how satisfied you're going to feel because how important our work is, the value we're creating in the world. You're going to operate at the top of your game. Those are all very satisfying things. But in elevating that companies and then therefore, to some degree, people are just forgetting about the fun entirely. This is the argument of nothing worth doing was ever easy. So we're going for satisfying, not fun. So I want to bring some of that pendulum back so. So that we are not pursuing greatness at the expense of our lives, the expense of our daily lived experiences. And if we also broaden our definition of fun a little bit, sometimes when I mention fun at work, people are like, oh, you mean like happy hours and off sites? That's sort of like fun icing when I mean like fun actually in the work. Making something and figuring out a challenge for the same reason. Puzzles are fun because it's satisfying, but the satisfaction produces the fun. Puzzles are fun because you're like, yes, I got that one. Yes, I got that. Yes, I figured that out. And so in some ways, I think of fun as the top of Maslow's hierarchy. I want satisfaction, but that's not enough. I want satisfaction and I want to be laughing most days because it's very easy to have satisfaction without fun if you hold that struggle equals greatness mindset. But I think that's not enough for me. That's not enough. I also want to be having a good time.
- [30:33]
B
Everything that you say about this makes so much sense to me, and it relates to some rules of thumb that I've come up with for experience in general, which I've had to come up with because if you're going to design experience, you sort of have to ask yourself, what is it? And I have a few rules, and they are exactly what the traditional mindset misses. One is that all experience is local. Which is to say, I might read in the paper about something that happened across the country, but I'm reading it locally. So I only am acquiring stuff locally. I'm only having that experience locally. The second thing is that all experience is in the present, which I may remember something from the past, but I'm remembering it in the present. And I may imagine something in the future, but I'm imagining it in the present. And then the last thing is, and this actually takes the pressure off of designers a little bit, which is that all experiences are mediated. They're all going to pass through the story that I'm in. So there's a limit to what you can actually design in the experience that's going to actually show up as how it's interpreted. And I know this. You have a team and you create a bunch of experiences and two of them hate it. And you're sort of like, I don't know, I tried. And so a part of what you're doing, I think is a part of a fundamental reframe. And I talk about this a lot, which is that when we see people as inputs to production to be used as means, inputs don't have subjective experience. But because we have framed people as inputs, we have forgotten that. What are some of the things that block Joy? I want to start off with professionalism is a buzzkill on work for humans. We've been exploring the principles of multi sided management, which is the belief that work is a product that every company designs, builds and delivers to employees. Along the way, people started asking how they could put these ideas into practice. So I founded the work design firm Elevenfold to help your company create the kind of work that makes teams feel alive and engaged instead of dead and dull. So you can reduce turnover and build commitment. We're doing something revolutionary here. Learn more@elevenfold.com that's 11fold.com.
- [33:13]
A
Yes. First of all, I love your experience design principles. They're very much how I think about work. And to lead us into professionalism, there are many ways that we can think about engagement or employee experience at a very lofty level. And a lot of times when we do employee surveys, there are grand questions on like, how much trust do you have in leadership and rate decision making at the company? And obviously so they're like aggregates of our experience. But what I'm more interested in is when someone wakes up in the morning, one person, a local experience felt by one person at one given moment in time. They wake up, they look in their closet and they're like, what am I going to put on? Where to work? So what is that experience like now? That could go two ways of many two ends of the spectrum. One is I got to put on my business costume. All right, I'm gonna put on my blazer, I'm gonna get my button down shirt. Oh, it's not pressed. It's a little wrinkly. Is that gonna be unprofessional? Okay, it's probably fine. All right, you're gonna do something with your hair. You're gonna look in the mirror like, do I look like I'm gonna fit in at work today? And then oftentimes the last thing people feel the need to then put on is a business mask. You can almost feel it in some people, or maybe people listening have felt it in themselves. Like you walk into the office building and you like, you sort of like breathe in, puff up your chest a little bit and you put on your pleasant face, a little bit of a smile, you're gonna say, so that business mask, it's just that way of showing up that is palatable, which also a word in and of itself. Like you're gonna be tasted and chewed up and you want to be pleasant for the person chewing you. Anyway, words do have many meanings, but it's sort of that way of saying, am I going to fit into the dominant culture and be accepted? Now contrast that with someone who wakes up and is like, oh, those sweatpants look comfy. I'm going to go exercise. I'm not going to have time to do my hair, so I'm going to put a hat on. But that's fine because exercise is important and my brain works whether my hair is looking good or a total mess. And I don't need a business mask. I believe that I am smart and capable and skilled and people at work like me. And so I'm just going to show up as I am and that's going to be cool because other people are going to show up. So those are the path in the wood woods that diverges. Those are two very different local experiences of work. And I would argue the former. That veers professional is not good. It's not good for the business because you're leaking not only organizational effort, people are trying to make themselves look professional as opposed to just putting their efforts towards being professional, which is doing high quality work on time, with respect. And also it's bad for the human who feels like they are not enough as they are, that they have to put on their business costume and be seen in a certain way. And when you do that, you're stifling your humanity, your creativity, your originality, all your best ideas. And so what I'm hoping to do is to help deprofessionalize work in the sort of performative professionalism way, real professionalism, doing great, high quality work on time, being kind, thoughtful, respect, like all those things, that's where we should be putting our effort. But frankly, I'm just tired. I'm just tired of, for myself and for others, putting effort into being presentable.
- [37:12]
B
It's a really important point, in part because you wake up your day the first way and it's the beginning of performative work, which is I'm going to look like work in a way that is not attached to whether or not what I'm doing is useful.
- [37:37]
A
Right.
- [37:38]
B
And how many slide decks have you seen where essentially it's an extension of that performance, which is, I know how to produce a deck that's going to carry a message that looks serious.
- [37:55]
A
Yes.
- [37:56]
B
It's like kabuki.
- [37:57]
A
What is that?
- [37:59]
B
It's a form of traditional Japanese drama with highly stylized song, mime and dance, now performed only by male actors using exaggerated gestures and body movements to express. And so kabuki, to me it means broad performance, Right? Not broad, but stylized. Yeah, stylized performance. And so you know Colonel John Boyd, he was the fighter pilot who completely redesigned American military strategy in general. And he used to stand at the door, he used to say to his people, do you want to be somebody or do you want to do something? And his thing was that in the Pentagon, if you wanted to be somebody, it was all about how big your budget was and that's how you get promoted and that's how you get to be a star general. And they were trying to make very light fighter planes. And so it wasn't about your budget, it was about the performance of the plane.
- [38:59]
A
Right.
- [38:59]
B
And so this idea that that performance is good for anybody. Yeah, definitely. Bad for first person experience, but it's bad all over.
- [39:09]
A
Yes. There's this great story I read in a book about improv, about creativity and how it gets tamped out of this over time. It was about a film school in la and the first year film students in their first class, they were asked, make a short film. Now, they didn't know what they were doing, so they did their best. And the professor looks at all the films and it was like, oh, these are technically shit. But they're super interesting, really creative. And you can feel as you're a first year film student, you're trying to do your art and put your expression into the world. Yeah, they're going to be interesting even if the camera angles are off or whatnot. Now they took this class and by the end of the year they made another short film, sort of a capstone. And what the professor found was, technically they were all much better. And that makes sense. That's what they've been studying. So they're getting all of their boom mics in the right position and whatnot. But creatively they sucked because now students had turned their attention to how do I make my film look professional? How do I make it look like what I think a film looks like? And to draw the analogy to work, I've seen so many strategy decks that look like those end of term movies. They're very polished, the design is perfect, they've got the bullet points, there are graphs. But they say something like, we are going to leverage our strategic capabilities in order to propel growth. By the end of Q2, we will have double down on our unique assets. And it's like, what you mean you're just going to try and use what you have and do better? That's all that says. And I think in the performance of professionalism, we lose bravery, we lose creative confidence. And not that you need those things every day, sometimes you just need the trains to run and the gears to move. But if you're tamping that down all across your business, now you've got a very boring business. And that's a business problem.
- [41:31]
B
I also have an announcement for everybody, which is that AI has cornered the market on looking like everybody else.
- [41:37]
A
Yeah, there's a new kid in town.
- [41:40]
B
And he's better at looking average.
- [41:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. First we were like, AI could never be creative, and now it's like a little bit creative. Like, AI could never make someone feel a certain way in conversation. And now it is therapists online. If we are not running towards what is uniquely compelling about human brains, then we're out of a job pretty soon.
- [42:07]
B
One thing AI will never do is have a first person experience.
- [42:11]
A
I think, oh, my God. Dart. I hope you're right.
- [42:15]
B
I think you talk about cozy teams. Why? Why cozy?
- [42:20]
A
Oh, yeah, I just love that word. When I think of coziness, I think of the wintertime where it's cold outside, maybe it's blustery and a little gross, and you are inside under A blanket with a hot cup of something. Feeling safe and comfortable and happy even. And in some ways, the blusteriness outside makes you even more cozy. So when I think about cozy teams, it's that feeling amongst a group of people where you're working together and the elements can be super rough, like the business context, the market, the client, the customers. You know, throw whatever you want at the team. It can be rough. And yet, if you feel cozy amongst your team, meaning you trust each other, you have each other's backs, you make each other feel comfortable, you make each other feel safe, all those sorts of feelings, well, now you are in many ways protected and happy. And the weather doesn't bother you because you have that amongst yourselves. And so when I think about all the teams that I've led, they're successful because they were cozy. And my favorite teams were always the coziest teams. They're the ones where we really knew each other. Not everything about each other, but I knew this person had a sibling and I knew this person really likes Pop Tarts. We knew each other and not only things about each other's lives, but we also really knew how each other liked to work. We really trusted each other. If one person's like, I'm not feeling well today, we're like, oh, yeah, go sleep. It was always that person being like, no, no, no, I can do it for the team. And the rest of the team being like, oh, my gosh, no, we've got you. It was this real solidarity. And not only did it make for a really joyful working experience, but also those teams create great work because it's also a place to be brave. You know, it's psychological safety. I feel safe enough in this team to be like, this might be a ridiculous idea, but I'm gonna say it anyway. And it's like, no, it's not a ridiculous idea. That's the best idea. And now we're gonna go do it. It feels funny to put it on like a engagement survey, like, how cozy is your team? But I think it would be a great measure of how close and high performing your teams are.
- [44:40]
B
Yeah. And sometimes the cold outside is the rest of the company.
- [44:43]
A
Totally.
- [44:44]
B
Or your client. Right. And so feeling the strong walls and windows that keep the cold out. You have a list of things about how to lead a cozy team. I think they're worth reading out. And then I'm going to come back to the first one. So treat people as high performers who care, have each other's backs, shoot straight with love, and I'LL visit that one again too. Try three team rituals, swap user manuals, do a daily check in, and use the fast food rule. I want to go back to treat people as high performers who care. What does that mean and why is it important?
- [45:21]
A
This is my rebuttal to the very normal economic setup that we have between employers and employees. So standard business logic would say that employers are trying to extract as much work as possible from employees and pay them the least amount that they can get away with in the market. And then conversely, an employee is trying to do the least amount of work possible while gathering the highest paycheck they can get away with. And to some degree, that tension is kind of healthy. But when we base our organizational cultures and also just the mindset we hold about our companies, when we base it on that premise that we are a model of extracting from each other, it's a race to the bottom. And it's no wonder why the sort of psychological relationship between employers and employees is so fraught, because it's one of a tug of war. And so I posit, what if we do the opposite? What if from an employer perspective, or actually maybe I'll shrink it to the team size to talk about it. When I lead teams, my goal is to do the highest quality work we can for the client while doing the least amount of work possible. And so if some amount of effort is not going to meaningfully improve the value to the client, I want that team member to go take a nap. I'm not out for a performative. We worked hard. The client doesn't care. The client cares about value. And so what I'm trying to do is to give the team everything they need to do amazing work. So I want to give them trust, empowerment, information, context, resources. That's my job. So that they produce the work and then the team's job is to have my back because I'm the one making promises to the clients and to do high quality work. So as opposed to a team member trying to get out a little early from work, knock off early, and do as little work as possible, I'm actually trying to make that true. I'm trying to get them out of work early so they can go to their yoga class, they are trying to do the best work possible. And I just think this is a far, far better system based on generosity. There's, you may know, a game theory called tit for tat, a game theory premise where the experiment was trying to understand in a cooperative system, when should you be generous and then when should you be selfish? And so you could imagine 20 people in a room all shaking each other's hands, when are you generous? When are you selfish? And the game theory problem, when you solve it, says you should always be generous first. That will maximize the output of the group. Only when someone defects, only when someone is selfish to you do you change tacks. And now in the future, you'll be selfish with them. And I think this is important in organizations, because when we start from a place of selfishness, like, I'm going to take from you and you're going to take from me, we lose. And not even, like, that's sad. It's not as fun to work there. But literally, the system does not produce. When we start from a place of generosity. That's the successful game theory move. And so that segment treat people as high performers who care. I'm always going into anybody that I work with, I'm going to assume that they want to do good work and they care about doing good work. And honestly, it's almost weird to me when leaders go into or just hold the assumption that people are lazy, because I've interviewed hundreds of people across dozens of organizations over my career in consulting, and I'm an outsider in these conversations are confidential, so they don't have a particular reason to lie. And every last person is like, yeah, I want to do a good job. I'm a little confused about what our priorities are. I'm not sure I have the right skills. But never once has someone been like, I don't want to do a good job. They do. And so if we believe that of people, it's a whole different mental model to start an employer employee relationship.
- [49:54]
B
A couple of times in this conversation, I have heard things that sound like flywheels, things that if you start them spinning, you can keep them spinning and make them better. Because they're feedback loops. Yeah, right. And one of them is that one, which is, we're going to start from a position of giving. And honestly, even if occasionally we take or find the other person taking, we're still going to keep working on giving because that keeps the virtuous flywheel going. And I think there's also another feedback that I heard along the way, which is, how does it feel when your teammates are having fun versus when they're not having fun? And how does it make you feel? People having fun are fun?
- [50:40]
A
Yes. Yeah. These are flywheels or tautologies. I'm not sure which, but I like them both.
- [50:47]
B
What I mean is people having fun are fun for Other people in the room is what I mean.
- [50:50]
A
Yes, yes, totally.
- [50:51]
B
So you have a section on Shoot straight with Love. It's inside Cozy Team. So now we have a metaphor of a gun inside this cozy.
- [51:03]
A
Not my best metaphor. Should have copyrighted that out.
- [51:09]
B
No, but I think it's the right metaphor because it's not that everything inside the Cozy team is fuzzy slippers. What is shoot straight with love?
- [51:20]
A
In the situation that we just talked about, you're being generous and someone on your team or leader is taking, then what you want to do is just talk to them. You want to tell them, this is what I'm seeing. And that doesn't mean that you're making assumptions or not caring about them. You're just shooting straight. So I tell this story. My first job I mentioned was teaching middle school math. And there was this one student in my class, seventh grade, so the hormones are right on the scene, and he is flirting with all the girls, and being sort of a class clown is so disruptive. And I'm like, oh, my God, he's my nemesis. And I'm 22 years old. I don't really know what I'm doing. And so I tried telling him to go, you have to leave the classroom or go to the principal's office. Or sometimes I try playing along, like, ha, ha, that's so funny. And nothing's working. So my teaching mentor that year, I was talking to him. I'm like, I don't know what to do. And he was like, have you tried talking to the kid? Oh, okay. I guess this is why I have a teaching mentor. Sounds obvious when you say it that way. So then I pulled the kid aside privately after class, and I'm like, hey, you're a really smart, funny kid. I really like having you in class. And you're kind of throwing us off our game. And it was such a different. Like, he immediately knew he was not surrounded by all these seventh grade girls he was trying to impress. He's like, I'm really sorry. I know I've been disruptive. And then we just had a conversation about what was going wrong. And so for the rest of that year, he was awesome. We were sort of, like, in it together. You know, I could look at him and he'd look at me, and we'd be like, yeah, okay, we have an understanding here. And so when I think about that in terms of organizations, if you feel like someone's not doing a good job, or if you're starting to feel like, oh, they're lazy or they don't care, or they're bad at their job, maybe any of those things could be true. But if you just talk to them and shoot straight and say, hey, it feels like your work the last few weeks has not been at the quality that I'm used to, or it seems like you're a little distracted, but you come at it from a perspective of, I like you, I believe in you, let's together figure out what's going wrong. Because it could be lots of things. It could be they're good at their job, but they've got some caregiving going on in the background. You don't see. It could be they're actually just not that great at their job. They're missing some skills. And then the question is, do you have capacity to help fill those skills or are you going to help them look for another job? Or say, this is not a fit and frankly, you fire them, or they actually just weren't clear on priorities and it's like, oh, shoot, did I not make it clear this week? We're working on this. Sometimes you just have to have those honest conversations, but you do it with the premise of, hopefully, I like you, I believe in you. I still think of you as a high performer who cares what's going on. That's making that not manifest in the team.
- [54:15]
B
That's a really good example of. There were two ways to approach that problem. One was essentially an authoritarian way, which is, I shall force you to be not disruptive. And the other way is I'm going to show you a path to someplace better that you want to go to.
- [54:33]
A
Yes. So from a behavior change perspective, if you're like, this person's behavior has got to change. There's always two options among many, many options. But I'll highlight two. There's one that's the enforcement way. So when you think organizationally, it's like, we're going to start tracking badge swipes. You're going to get into the office, I'm going to look you in the eyes and watch you sit at your desk and type on your computer. That's an enforcement. The other way is make the right thing, the fun thing. So back in my teaching days again, those teaching days really paid off. And good, good stories. We were having this problem where the kids were playing soccer in the afternoon during some afternoon free time was right next to where the road was the pickup zone. And so frequently the kids soccer balls would accidentally get kicked into the road, which would mean the kids would then want to go into the road and Obviously this is a safety problem. So we were talking about, okay, so what do we do about this? And the first idea was, oh, well, we should just build a fence so then the balls won't go in the road anymore. So then we just start talking about, all right, well do we have budget for capital improvements and how long is this going to take? Or we have to shut down the field in order to make this happen and everyone's going down that road. And then a colleague of mine says, well, what if we just make the field nicer a little further away from the road? And we were like, oh, that's another way to go. It was much cheaper. It was just like improving the sod a little bit where there were like some wet parts just sort of like evening things. This was a much easier solution than building a whole fence. But the premise of it I just found so interesting because on the one hand you can stop the problem downstream or you can entice the kids to literally greener pastures further from the road so that they just almost without being told, want to go play over there, because now that's the nicer field. And so when I think about leaders want their teams to be engaged and high performing. So one way is to build a fence and mandate stuff, and another way is to think about how do we make teams work, our organization just intrinsically more fun and attractive, and then you don't have to mandate shit, then the behavior is what you want, but in a genuinely enjoyable way.
- [57:09]
B
And central to that story is that soccer got better.
- [57:14]
A
Yes. Yeah.
- [57:16]
B
And honestly, all you really have to do is put a goal posts over there and now that's where you play soccer and soccer gets better. So the whole return to work thing, the companies in Silicon Valley spent decades hiring smart, agentic people who had fresh ideas, weren't necessarily rule followers because that's what you want, and then wanted to give them a rule that said what they have to do. And everybody was surprised when they didn't follow it. And the ones who left because it was a stupid rule, there was like different choices. There were people who followed the rules, there were people who just said, I'm going to evade these rules, but stay. And there's a bunch of people said, I'm leaving.
- [58:08]
A
Yeah. When it comes to return to office, I'm much more interested in the conversation around power than I am around real estate, because I think that's what the conversation really is. I, for example, love being in an office because I genuinely like being around people. You get the free snacks, it's a place to go. It's actually really fun. However, I don't want someone to make me go to an office because now I feel unempowered or not trusted. And so I think that conversation, it's about power more than anything else. And when you say there are some people, people have different reactions. Some comply, some stay and don't comply, and some leave. Well, you have to ask yourself, who is going to leave? And generally it's the people who know they have options because they're the highest performers. The people who don't feel like they have options in the market, they're staying. And so whenever you have a power struggle in an organization, generally it's a recipe for losing the people that you most want to stay. And so that's, I think, the real conversation under the return to office, it's not so much. I mean, we talk a lot about what kinds of work demand, what kinds of space around you or what kind of people. But I think really it's about how are you. Or as we were talking about, are you treating people as high performers who care? Because high performers who care will generally want to be in the place that's best for their work, for their brain. So lots of times I've led teams with no RTO mandate, but we just hang out in the office because we just liked each other and it was fun. And not every day we would generally be like, oh, are you going in the office today? Like, oh, I'm going. Are you going? Yeah. Okay, we'll all get together. And that was it. We just did what we thought would make it a good day. And so again, it stems from this. What's your original premise? Do you believe that people are going to try and get away with as little as possible, or do you believe that people are going to try and do their best work? Because taking pride in your work is a very human thing that generally people want.
- [60:17]
B
I'm often reminded of, have you ever tried to push a feather through the water? Anything floating in the water, you try to push it and it just slips around the side of your hand. You can't push things in water, but you can draw them. You can pull your hand away from them and they will absolutely follow. Yeah, it's kind of like that. It's like that's the way this works.
- [60:39]
A
You know, it reminds me of I was taking tango classes for a while, and the way that you lead someone is not by pushing them, that just makes them fall and not want to be your partner anymore. The way you Lead is you back up your body and open up space. You open up space in front of them, and they feel compelled to move in that direction. They get the message. And so I just think it's a good prompt for all leaders or anyone to thinking about behavior change. How are we opening up space? How are we drawing the feather forward such that people are like, yeah, that looks awesome. That looks fun. I want to go do that.
- [61:16]
B
I want to get to the closing questions. And I've asked you the question before of what job you hire your job to do for you, but I want to ask the question a little differently this time, which is, what job did you hire this book to do for you? Writing this book? I mean, not the book.
- [61:32]
A
The very simplest answer is I hired it to make me an author, which it did just because it exists in the same way that I have a daughter and she made me a mother, and that's it. But obviously, I want it to do more than just sit on my desk beside me. So I think there's a right answer and then there's a truer answer. And I'll give you both the right answer, which isn't untrue, but just is more right, is that I hired it to help me make impact. I hired it to help me spread the word that work can be fun and we can make it so. And here are some ways that you can make it so for yourself. And so in many ways, I hired it to be the little glass bottle that I roll up a little note inside and I send off to see. And now I'm just sending off thousands of thousands of these little notes in bottles through the macmillan distribution system off to bookstores. And so in some sense, it's, yeah, I hired it to help me make impact, to be the vehicle for impact. So that's the right and yet not untrue answer. The truest answer is that I hired it to be my art. I guess I don't know how to phrase that.
- [62:45]
B
To be my creative medium.
- [62:47]
A
Yeah. Because I think of this book as art. And maybe that sounds lofty, but I just don't care. There's lots of people who write books to be their credentials, to be their very thick business cards, to help them win business. That's an important function of a book. But I hired this book, or the way I think about this book is that I felt like I had a book inside me knocking to get out, and I felt that well up inside of me. There's a great Mary Oliver quote that goes something like the most Regretful people in the world are those who felt their creative power uprising and gave it neither time nor power. And so when I had that feeling of I have something to say that is important, that is existential, that is fun, that is meaningful. I've learned all of these things and I know why it's important. And I felt that I was like, okay, I'm going to give it time and power and so I'm going to make a book out of it. I'm going to go to bat for this book. I'm going to give it everything that I have. Because for me, it's self expression more than it is a tool in any other way.
- [63:55]
B
Somebody asked me recently why I'm working on a book and I said, to create new beauty. And I think you have.
- [64:04]
A
Thanks.
- [64:05]
B
Created new beauty. First of all, it's fun.
- [64:09]
A
Thank you. I think so.
- [64:11]
B
It's very fun to read. And it is definitely in stretchy pants, you know, it's not wearing business attire. It's fun and I hope it for my kids. I hope that. And I already pre ordered one for my daughter.
- [64:29]
A
Oh, thank you.
- [64:30]
B
You can pre order this, everybody.
- [64:32]
A
Yes. Yeah. You know, when I think about what I want from my daughter's life, I think if every night she can curl up in bed and say to herself, today was fun, then that's a really good life. If we can all say that, then I think we've won. And so that's what I hope for your child and for mine and everyone else's out there.
- [64:54]
B
What did writing the book cost you?
- [64:56]
A
Well, aside from a lot of money, like getting the catering bill for the launch party and all that. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of opportunity costs, of course. Like I stepped back from consulting many months ago to work on the book launch, so there's all that sort of stuff. But honestly, I don't care. Everything has opportunity cost to it. And I would be a fraud if I didn't also live by what I'm preaching, which is that fun and greatness can live together. So many authors will say, like, oh my God, writing is pain and the blood, sweat and tears, but it's worth it in the end. But honestly, I don't feel that. I had a great time writing this book. It didn't cost me that much emotionally anyway. It was the most fun I've had in my whole career. And I hope it's great and I hope it's wildly successful and I write about this stuff because I believe it and I feel it. That greatness can be fun.
- [65:59]
B
Where can people learn more about you and about your book?
- [66:02]
A
Breegroff.com from there you can pre order or order the book. You can also find it wherever books are sold. You can find me on substack and.
- [66:14]
B
LinkedIn and look for the COVID which is a giant yellow circle with a little smiley face in the middle.
- [66:23]
A
Yeah, you can't miss it. It is neon and all the text.
- [66:29]
B
On it is not lined up. Yes, it really expresses it well. Thank you very much for coming on the show to talk about this.
- [66:37]
A
Oh, thank you for having me.
- [66:39]
B
And it was fun.
- [66:39]
A
It was fun.
- [66:40]
B
It's always fun.
- [66:41]
A
It is talking to you. Thank you.
- [66:45]
B
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it, believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and his high standard for quality. Final note, the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.