[Music]
the world of work is so important to so
many people but I’ll argue that for most
of us the world of work is broken this
is because we spend most of our time in
environments and in business cultures
that were designed in the Industrial Age
and weren’t designed for way the world
is today I would argue that businesses
need to fundamentally change their ways
of working to reflect the way the world
is and not the way the world was and if
they don’t change they face becoming
irrelevant to a new generation of
employees that see work differently and
they don’t just see it as somewhere that
they come into between the hours of 9:00
to 5:00 every day to exchange their time
just for a paycheck so why now why am i
standing here today talking to you about
work well to answer that question I want
to reflect on some of my experiences in
my early career when I was a marketer my
job then was to understand this changing
customer and businesses knew full well
that these customers were changing due
to the environment outside and my job
was to understand how they ticked and to
work out new ways in to engage them yet
while I was doing all of this work I
would then look back into the
organization and go why are you changing
inside as well because surely the people
that you’re hiring are very similar to
the people that you’re selling to and
then as I work for more and more
businesses it become really clear they
didn’t change their ways of working
because they didn’t have to they knew
that so many other businesses operated
under exactly the same model that they
did that if their employees were unhappy
where they were if they went and work
for the business down the road they’re
going to be equally as unhappy there and
another thing they thought well they’re
not going to go out and set up their own
business because you need loads of money
and you need to have a huge network and
if you didn’t have that there was no
worry of you going to disappear either
so the answer to it was tough if you’re
not happy you just got to put up with it
however things have started to change
and there’s a new type of employee
coming into the workplace and the
majority of them are Millennials so many
of you may have heard this phrase it’s
well overused but for those of you that
haven’t millenials are people that were
born between the early 1980s and the
late 1990s so they come into the
workforce after the Millennium hence the
name this this generation just like
every other generation before them was
shaped by their environment and I think
the two biggest things that this
generation were impacted by were the
recession and access to the Internet so
let’s talk about the recession most of
these individuals have spent their
entire career in a post recessionary
period they saw friends and loved ones
that have been loyal to their
organizations for years lose their jobs
overnight which show to them that
loyalty meant nothing in the world of
business
they also saw the impact that big
business did and they lost a lot of
trust in how in in big business and what
they were doing and it also they saw the
impact that austerity had on society and
it really made them question their own
spending habits and what really was
success and do I really need to own all
those things or what I’d much rather
have experiences the second thing that
impacted them was access to the Internet
so like no other generation before they
had access to the world’s knowledge just
at the click of a button so they could
literally fulfill their endless
curiosity by going online and other
things they could do is they could
connect to anyone in the world as long
as they had an internet connection and
another thing the internet did was it
just provided an endless amount of
content informing them of what was going
on in the world like no other generation
had seen before so whether this was war
conflict environmental disasters they
were just aware of things that were
going on
much more than generations before so
bearing this in mind with these two big
things which is shaped their mindset
they then went into this world of work
which was based on the Industrial Age
and they started asking questions why
are you doing things like this why are
you behaving like that it doesn’t make
any sense and actually it just got met
with that’s just how we do things here
and and they caused a lot of conflict
between the generations in the workplace
but around the same time a new type of
organization started to emerge so
whether they were started by Millennials
themselves so just the Facebook set up
by Mark Zuckerberg or they were a
business that was set up in this new
world they understood what was going on
and they made these new ways of working
at the heart of how the business was run
what this did is this shifted the
balance of power between employers and
employees because suddenly it gave an
opportunity for all these Millennials
that didn’t feel as though they fitted
into this traditional world of work to
go and work somewhere else that was much
more aligned with how they wanted to do
things so this led to a mass exodus of
millennial talent all moving to these
organizations and they started to
experience all sorts of different things
from from working there but actually on
the face of it it seems as though it was
a bit of a silly move and what I mean by
that is you they were leaving
traditional organizations with good
salaries pensions the the opportunity to
progress to go and work in these new
types of organisations that perhaps
particularly in the case of startups may
go out of business within six months
time certainly but it didn’t have a
gold-plated pension and often didn’t
have the same amount of salary as what
they would experience at the traditional
companies so being a millennial myself
are the older end of the spectrum I was
really intrigued about what was going on
so I actually switched and took the leap
myself I went to work in many of these
different businesses and I immersed
myself in the startup world and what I
found was six key things that a lot of
these new businesses were doing that the
traditional businesses simply weren’t
the first one was a real sense of
purpose and when I say a real sense of
purpose I mean not one of those
documents that sits in the drawer
gathering dust talking about vision
mission and values as we heard earlier
because actually that didn’t really
drive the organization at all all it did
was serve a purpose of looking good on
the wall and actually these new
organizations they really did have a
compelling vision and that compelling
vision was was really built into the way
they operated the way they behaved and
it gave these these people working in
them a real sense of purpose and
actually from a millennial perspective
they were often beaten over the head
would be really lazy but I saw them
working 60 plus hours a week so it
wasn’t the fact that they were lazy they
just weren’t motivated to work in a
world that was completely different to
theirs the second thing I noticed was
there was a huge focus on personal
development now if you look in the lot
of traditional organizations personal
development was pretty much an annual
performance review just think of that
you’ve gotta wait a year to find out if
you did something good or did something
bad the second thing was you might have
a few classroom-based training but that
probably took a year to get through hey
char another year to get through finance
so the time you did it was a three year
old course so is that really going to
add value to your career and your own
personal development so what these new
businesses were doing was they were
looking at innovative new ways to allow
people to develop and they trusted them
to do it as well so they’d say here’s a
budget you going to spend it on whatever
personal development you need whether
that’s access to an online course or
even acting classes whatever you feel is
appropriate for you we will help you
they also encourage things like site
jobs or doing things for charity because
they knew that the skills they would
learn outside of work would directly
benefit what they were doing inside of
work the third one and I think probably
the biggest one that that needs to be
overcome is the evolution of the
hierarchy
now many businesses particularly
traditional businesses the hierarchy is
the foundation of how they operate but
actually I would argue it’s more harm
than good let me give you an example if
I’m really really good at something I
got I get promoted quicker into a
position such as a management position
where I then spend less time doing the
thing that got me there in the first
place another thing that they do is well
with the hierarchies is by default as
you go up the hierarchy there’s fewer
and fewer positions so what that created
was this constant state of tension and
stress where people were competing with
each other
maneuvering themselves playing office
politics fighting against each other to
make sure that they got promoted first
over rather than focus on the real job
which was to work together and focus on
beating the competition in many of these
new organizations they adopted new ways
of working such as which is all about
collaboration now there’s lots of
different models out there but the one I
saw work really well was one called
Halak recei and holacracy is
self-organizing teams it was saying
based on the work that we’ve got we’re
going to form a virtual team within our
office and we’re going to allow the
person to lead there to be the person
with the most amount of skills in that
area so it didn’t matter if that was
someone that was an intern that been
there for a month if it was a
particularly focused project where that
person was brilliantly just on their
thesis on it they should lead that
project but that took a huge removal of
ego and it meant that you didn’t do
things based on your job title and that
was a fundamental difference and the
amount of that changed the way
businesses operate was huge and another
thing they did about this whole idea of
collaboration and the removal of the
hierarchy was they did things like
shared equity schemes or shared profit
schemes where you’ve got money based on
the combined output the team not as you
as an individual or where you were in
the in the hierarchy the fourth thing
they did was they changed the way they
communicate so I’m sure if any of you in
here are working in a corporate
environment you would agree that the
primary forms of communication are
emails and face-to-face meetings and
what I found was people would go into
work and do loads of emails loads of
face-to-face meetings and they’d
actually do their work at home that’s
absolutely ludicrous the place where you
do work is not at work so what was
happening a lot of these new
organizations was they were just
changing the paradigm and they were
saying we’re going to do stand-up
meetings we’re going to do walking
meetings
we’re going to limit meetings to 30
minutes or we’re going to use tools that
just do a daily digest of all the cool
stuff that’s happened today so if I want
to check in at midnight before I go to
bed I can do that but if I want to do it
on the commute on the way in I can do
that too it was about facilitating
communication and allowing people to do
their job and do something that they
were passionate about another thing they
did with regards to communication was
they just allowed people to use the
tools they were so used to using outside
of work so inside of work is no you
can’t use that you can’t use Facebook
can’t do this but actually outside of
work you were on whatsapp to contact a
certain friend or do group bookings or
whatever you wanted to do be learning
how to use that in work and actually the
business just got out of the way got out
of the way in these new organizations
and allowed employees to do what they
needed to do to get the job done the
fifth thing that they did was they saw
business as a force for good now again
going back to what I was saying earlier
about how a lot of these Millennials
were shaped by the recession a lot of
them didn’t want to be part of the same
system and perpetuate this really bad
behavior that led to a lot of the
problems that they witnessed for most of
their career so they turned their back
on it and instead wanted to work for an
organization where of course profit was
important but it wasn’t at the detriment
to the planet and it wasn’t a detriment
to people whether they were inside or
outside of the organization and actually
work became a lot more than just turning
up and exchanging your time for money it
was about being part of something and
about doing something where business was
a genuinely positive force for good
the final thing they did was they
focused very very heavily on flexible
working and this is really really
important and the key thing about
flexible working is nothing to do with
technology is all to do with trust
basically there’s this paradigm and this
mindset in many traditional
organizations that if you’re not sat in
that seat you are not doing your job and
that is absolutely crazy because if you
think about it most of us have got
better smartphones than what work gives
us we’ve certainly got better laptops
we’ve got fast internet at home for the
majority of us
so actually we could be more productive
at home than we could ever be in the
office plus we won’t have someone
bothering us that every time we go and
get a cup of tea but this flexible
working wasn’t just about being able to
work from home in your pajamas it was
about being trusted to get on and do
your job to the best that you could do
it
irrespective of when or where that was
and what that’s done has opened up an
entire new industry of where as well
such as whether they were stay-at-home
parents that wanted to then go back to
work flexibly all the Y’s have you seen
the digital nomads they want to go
traveling around the world but work at
the same time so those are the key
things that I saw that businesses were
doing that were really attracting this
new type of employee but I saw a huge
increase in entrepreneurial it
entrepreneurialism – or freelancing as
well and what was key to that was why
was there suddenly this big shift of
people going out on their own it was
because the barriers to entry had
dramatically decreased because of the
internet so things that would have taken
huge teams of experts or huge huge
budgets in the past now you could do
online with free automated tools you
could also go on youtube and watch how
to learn how to use that tool and you
can get loads of free content online in
terms of how do you build a website how
do you get your first clients there was
also this huge marketplace that had
opened where it just all it did with his
match up supply and demand so I could be
working from London but get a job
working for someone else Singapore and
it was a perfect match that I never
would have had before
so hopefully you can see that there’s
this new type of organization operating
in new ways and there’s also the option
of being an entrepreneur but what that
meant was there was a whole range of
options open to employees that weren’t
available before but actually I’ve been
talking about Millennials for a lot of
this it’s much much bigger than that
if we was to look at just a normal
adoption curve Millennials were just the
early adopters because they didn’t have
anything else to over write this is all
they knew instead this is the way of
working that everybody wanted to do but
only now are the other generators
starting to see the value and as more
and more these businesses operate in
these new ways
can become more and more successful more
and more businesses started to follow
suit
so for me this is giving rise to the
modern employee and not just looking at
Millennials and actually what’s really
interesting is a lot of traditional
businesses of really starting to notice
now they are having to change because
they’re finding it very very difficult
to attract engage and retain this new
modern employee and I think Jack Welsh
the former chairman and CEO of General
Electric summed this up very well when
he said if the rate of change on the
outside exceeds the rate of change on
the inside the end is near now there may
be a little bit dramatic but there’s
certainly a few CEOs that are worrying
now because there’s people that just
don’t want to work in the environment
that they’re providing so my final
thought is this there’s a new type of
employee for a new type of organization
those businesses that adapt will thrive
and that and those businesses that don’t
will disappear my question is which
business do you want to be thanked
[Applause]
you
the world of work is so important to so
many people but I’ll argue that for most
of us the world of work is broken this
is because we spend most of our time in
environments and in business cultures
that were designed in the Industrial Age
and weren’t designed for way the world
is today I would argue that businesses
need to fundamentally change their ways
of working to reflect the way the world
is and not the way the world was and if
they don’t change they face becoming
irrelevant to a new generation of
employees that see work differently and
they don’t just see it as somewhere that
they come into between the hours of 9:00
to 5:00 every day to exchange their time
just for a paycheck so why now why am i
standing here today talking to you about
work well to answer that question I want
to reflect on some of my experiences in
my early career when I was a marketer my
job then was to understand this changing
customer and businesses knew full well
that these customers were changing due
to the environment outside and my job
was to understand how they ticked and to
work out new ways in to engage them yet
while I was doing all of this work I
would then look back into the
organization and go why are you changing
inside as well because surely the people
that you’re hiring are very similar to
the people that you’re selling to and
then as I work for more and more
businesses it become really clear they
didn’t change their ways of working
because they didn’t have to they knew
that so many other businesses operated
under exactly the same model that they
did that if their employees were unhappy
where they were if they went and work
for the business down the road they’re
going to be equally as unhappy there and
another thing they thought well they’re
not going to go out and set up their own
business because you need loads of money
and you need to have a huge network and
if you didn’t have that there was no
worry of you going to disappear either
so the answer to it was tough if you’re
not happy you just got to put up with it
however things have started to change
and there’s a new type of employee
coming into the workplace and the
majority of them are Millennials so many
of you may have heard this phrase it’s
well overused but for those of you that
haven’t millenials are people that were
born between the early 1980s and the
late 1990s so they come into the
workforce after the Millennium hence the
name this this generation just like
every other generation before them was
shaped by their environment and I think
the two biggest things that this
generation were impacted by were the
recession and access to the Internet so
let’s talk about the recession most of
these individuals have spent their
entire career in a post recessionary
period they saw friends and loved ones
that have been loyal to their
organizations for years lose their jobs
overnight which show to them that
loyalty meant nothing in the world of
business
they also saw the impact that big
business did and they lost a lot of
trust in how in in big business and what
they were doing and it also they saw the
impact that austerity had on society and
it really made them question their own
spending habits and what really was
success and do I really need to own all
those things or what I’d much rather
have experiences the second thing that
impacted them was access to the Internet
so like no other generation before they
had access to the world’s knowledge just
at the click of a button so they could
literally fulfill their endless
curiosity by going online and other
things they could do is they could
connect to anyone in the world as long
as they had an internet connection and
another thing the internet did was it
just provided an endless amount of
content informing them of what was going
on in the world like no other generation
had seen before so whether this was war
conflict environmental disasters they
were just aware of things that were
going on
much more than generations before so
bearing this in mind with these two big
things which is shaped their mindset
they then went into this world of work
which was based on the Industrial Age
and they started asking questions why
are you doing things like this why are
you behaving like that it doesn’t make
any sense and actually it just got met
with that’s just how we do things here
and and they caused a lot of conflict
between the generations in the workplace
but around the same time a new type of
organization started to emerge so
whether they were started by Millennials
themselves so just the Facebook set up
by Mark Zuckerberg or they were a
business that was set up in this new
world they understood what was going on
and they made these new ways of working
at the heart of how the business was run
what this did is this shifted the
balance of power between employers and
employees because suddenly it gave an
opportunity for all these Millennials
that didn’t feel as though they fitted
into this traditional world of work to
go and work somewhere else that was much
more aligned with how they wanted to do
things so this led to a mass exodus of
millennial talent all moving to these
organizations and they started to
experience all sorts of different things
from from working there but actually on
the face of it it seems as though it was
a bit of a silly move and what I mean by
that is you they were leaving
traditional organizations with good
salaries pensions the the opportunity to
progress to go and work in these new
types of organisations that perhaps
particularly in the case of startups may
go out of business within six months
time certainly but it didn’t have a
gold-plated pension and often didn’t
have the same amount of salary as what
they would experience at the traditional
companies so being a millennial myself
are the older end of the spectrum I was
really intrigued about what was going on
so I actually switched and took the leap
myself I went to work in many of these
different businesses and I immersed
myself in the startup world and what I
found was six key things that a lot of
these new businesses were doing that the
traditional businesses simply weren’t
the first one was a real sense of
purpose and when I say a real sense of
purpose I mean not one of those
documents that sits in the drawer
gathering dust talking about vision
mission and values as we heard earlier
because actually that didn’t really
drive the organization at all all it did
was serve a purpose of looking good on
the wall and actually these new
organizations they really did have a
compelling vision and that compelling
vision was was really built into the way
they operated the way they behaved and
it gave these these people working in
them a real sense of purpose and
actually from a millennial perspective
they were often beaten over the head
would be really lazy but I saw them
working 60 plus hours a week so it
wasn’t the fact that they were lazy they
just weren’t motivated to work in a
world that was completely different to
theirs the second thing I noticed was
there was a huge focus on personal
development now if you look in the lot
of traditional organizations personal
development was pretty much an annual
performance review just think of that
you’ve gotta wait a year to find out if
you did something good or did something
bad the second thing was you might have
a few classroom-based training but that
probably took a year to get through hey
char another year to get through finance
so the time you did it was a three year
old course so is that really going to
add value to your career and your own
personal development so what these new
businesses were doing was they were
looking at innovative new ways to allow
people to develop and they trusted them
to do it as well so they’d say here’s a
budget you going to spend it on whatever
personal development you need whether
that’s access to an online course or
even acting classes whatever you feel is
appropriate for you we will help you
they also encourage things like site
jobs or doing things for charity because
they knew that the skills they would
learn outside of work would directly
benefit what they were doing inside of
work the third one and I think probably
the biggest one that that needs to be
overcome is the evolution of the
hierarchy
now many businesses particularly
traditional businesses the hierarchy is
the foundation of how they operate but
actually I would argue it’s more harm
than good let me give you an example if
I’m really really good at something I
got I get promoted quicker into a
position such as a management position
where I then spend less time doing the
thing that got me there in the first
place another thing that they do is well
with the hierarchies is by default as
you go up the hierarchy there’s fewer
and fewer positions so what that created
was this constant state of tension and
stress where people were competing with
each other
maneuvering themselves playing office
politics fighting against each other to
make sure that they got promoted first
over rather than focus on the real job
which was to work together and focus on
beating the competition in many of these
new organizations they adopted new ways
of working such as which is all about
collaboration now there’s lots of
different models out there but the one I
saw work really well was one called
Halak recei and holacracy is
self-organizing teams it was saying
based on the work that we’ve got we’re
going to form a virtual team within our
office and we’re going to allow the
person to lead there to be the person
with the most amount of skills in that
area so it didn’t matter if that was
someone that was an intern that been
there for a month if it was a
particularly focused project where that
person was brilliantly just on their
thesis on it they should lead that
project but that took a huge removal of
ego and it meant that you didn’t do
things based on your job title and that
was a fundamental difference and the
amount of that changed the way
businesses operate was huge and another
thing they did about this whole idea of
collaboration and the removal of the
hierarchy was they did things like
shared equity schemes or shared profit
schemes where you’ve got money based on
the combined output the team not as you
as an individual or where you were in
the in the hierarchy the fourth thing
they did was they changed the way they
communicate so I’m sure if any of you in
here are working in a corporate
environment you would agree that the
primary forms of communication are
emails and face-to-face meetings and
what I found was people would go into
work and do loads of emails loads of
face-to-face meetings and they’d
actually do their work at home that’s
absolutely ludicrous the place where you
do work is not at work so what was
happening a lot of these new
organizations was they were just
changing the paradigm and they were
saying we’re going to do stand-up
meetings we’re going to do walking
meetings
we’re going to limit meetings to 30
minutes or we’re going to use tools that
just do a daily digest of all the cool
stuff that’s happened today so if I want
to check in at midnight before I go to
bed I can do that but if I want to do it
on the commute on the way in I can do
that too it was about facilitating
communication and allowing people to do
their job and do something that they
were passionate about another thing they
did with regards to communication was
they just allowed people to use the
tools they were so used to using outside
of work so inside of work is no you
can’t use that you can’t use Facebook
can’t do this but actually outside of
work you were on whatsapp to contact a
certain friend or do group bookings or
whatever you wanted to do be learning
how to use that in work and actually the
business just got out of the way got out
of the way in these new organizations
and allowed employees to do what they
needed to do to get the job done the
fifth thing that they did was they saw
business as a force for good now again
going back to what I was saying earlier
about how a lot of these Millennials
were shaped by the recession a lot of
them didn’t want to be part of the same
system and perpetuate this really bad
behavior that led to a lot of the
problems that they witnessed for most of
their career so they turned their back
on it and instead wanted to work for an
organization where of course profit was
important but it wasn’t at the detriment
to the planet and it wasn’t a detriment
to people whether they were inside or
outside of the organization and actually
work became a lot more than just turning
up and exchanging your time for money it
was about being part of something and
about doing something where business was
a genuinely positive force for good
the final thing they did was they
focused very very heavily on flexible
working and this is really really
important and the key thing about
flexible working is nothing to do with
technology is all to do with trust
basically there’s this paradigm and this
mindset in many traditional
organizations that if you’re not sat in
that seat you are not doing your job and
that is absolutely crazy because if you
think about it most of us have got
better smartphones than what work gives
us we’ve certainly got better laptops
we’ve got fast internet at home for the
majority of us
so actually we could be more productive
at home than we could ever be in the
office plus we won’t have someone
bothering us that every time we go and
get a cup of tea but this flexible
working wasn’t just about being able to
work from home in your pajamas it was
about being trusted to get on and do
your job to the best that you could do
it
irrespective of when or where that was
and what that’s done has opened up an
entire new industry of where as well
such as whether they were stay-at-home
parents that wanted to then go back to
work flexibly all the Y’s have you seen
the digital nomads they want to go
traveling around the world but work at
the same time so those are the key
things that I saw that businesses were
doing that were really attracting this
new type of employee but I saw a huge
increase in entrepreneurial it
entrepreneurialism – or freelancing as
well and what was key to that was why
was there suddenly this big shift of
people going out on their own it was
because the barriers to entry had
dramatically decreased because of the
internet so things that would have taken
huge teams of experts or huge huge
budgets in the past now you could do
online with free automated tools you
could also go on youtube and watch how
to learn how to use that tool and you
can get loads of free content online in
terms of how do you build a website how
do you get your first clients there was
also this huge marketplace that had
opened where it just all it did with his
match up supply and demand so I could be
working from London but get a job
working for someone else Singapore and
it was a perfect match that I never
would have had before
so hopefully you can see that there’s
this new type of organization operating
in new ways and there’s also the option
of being an entrepreneur but what that
meant was there was a whole range of
options open to employees that weren’t
available before but actually I’ve been
talking about Millennials for a lot of
this it’s much much bigger than that
if we was to look at just a normal
adoption curve Millennials were just the
early adopters because they didn’t have
anything else to over write this is all
they knew instead this is the way of
working that everybody wanted to do but
only now are the other generators
starting to see the value and as more
and more these businesses operate in
these new ways
can become more and more successful more
and more businesses started to follow
suit
so for me this is giving rise to the
modern employee and not just looking at
Millennials and actually what’s really
interesting is a lot of traditional
businesses of really starting to notice
now they are having to change because
they’re finding it very very difficult
to attract engage and retain this new
modern employee and I think Jack Welsh
the former chairman and CEO of General
Electric summed this up very well when
he said if the rate of change on the
outside exceeds the rate of change on
the inside the end is near now there may
be a little bit dramatic but there’s
certainly a few CEOs that are worrying
now because there’s people that just
don’t want to work in the environment
that they’re providing so my final
thought is this there’s a new type of
employee for a new type of organization
those businesses that adapt will thrive
and that and those businesses that don’t
will disappear my question is which
business do you want to be thanked
[Applause]
you
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