#97: The freedom to overwork

Speaker A: Mark, it's good to see you. Thank you for making the time, and welcome to the Stepsetto podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker A: Mark, you spent about. I hope I get this right, 22 years at the big four firm. You became a partner, you became an AI leader. You're about to publish a book. That's a hell of a CV. I have, uh, about, say, 15, 20 minutes with you. There's, uh, a lot of topics and subjects that I know you could bring tons of value to. I'd love to discuss the status of the modern workplace as well as its evolution in a way. And, uh, I know that there are some angles in there that you feel strongly about. I want to unpack them with you. There's a newsletter that you are. That you are quite busy with. It's called For a Thought by Mark Orlich. You recently wrote a piece called Beyond Leadership to the Burnout Society. I found that fascinating. And it kind of goes on the idea that individuals nowadays are supposed to be free to explore their potential, but in a way, they're trapping themselves. And I want to ask you to unpack that with me. Maybe I'll start by, um, yeah, asking. Asking you about specifically this piece, what it means to you. And, uh, from there we can have, uh, a chat about the, uh, modern workplace and how you perceive it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Great. And thanks so much for mentioning the newsletter. I think that's exactly right. I think especially if we look back, let's remember that. Especially if we consider education systems. Right? Typical education systems were designed to produce factory workers, Right? That's why everything is dictated by a clock. You sit in straight rows, you do exactly what you're told, and you were dictated by negation. You were told what you cannot do. Right? Fast forward 150 years, and now we live in a society where basically you're. You're controlled by your freedom. No one is stopping you from doing more, from working a hundred hours. In fact, they're basically moving themselves out of the way from restricting you from overdoing it to allowing you to overdo it. Right. And if we think about this scientifically, even the second law of thermodynamics is that if a state is left by itself, it will lead toward entropy. Right? It would lead to disorder. And I think what we're doing in the modern workplace is leaving the workplace to its own devices, and that will ultimately lead to disorder, to entropy of the system. And I think that's exactly what's happening by almost by design. Right? And the result then is going to be burnout, which is not an individual detriment, it's a detriment overall to society when it's at the scale that we're seeing today. Right. And just, I mean just to plug the, the book, there's a philosopher in, in Berlin, a Korean born German, uh, philosopher, Byung Chul Han and he writes about this extensively. And I think you see this in, in a number of forms. If I could just bring out one, one example. If you think about multitasking, multitasking is something that people now put on their CV about how excellently I can multitask. Multitasking is really something for animals to be able to eat and protect themselves from predators at the same time. Right. So basically they need to, you know, eat the grass that's in front of them while always paying attention to whether there's a danger approaching them. So it's not really the highest point of humanity. The highest point of humanity in fact is boredom. The highest point of humanity is very deep thinking and you know, a curious free mind which we don't get in this society that we have today of constant partial attention. I mean why, why is it that people always have these aha moments when they're in the shower? Because the only time in your day where you don't have uh, podcasts running or a movie running in the background or music or something to kind of give you this feeling of util. Utility. Right. Which I, I think it's actually quite the opposite. We're, we're filling the time, uh, and that time would be better spent empty, right. Just walking through the woods quietly and letting your thoughts kind of, kind of run. I think that would have a much better impact on the individual and ultimately in the society.

Speaker A: So essentially I'm paraphrasing, but um, let me see if I, if I get your thoughts right. In a way we think we're free, but we're enslaving ourselves. And the uh, way I see it, especially in this day and age, we constantly talk about this productivity. There is a race towards productivity. I like to think that we are always coming up with new ways of um, optimizing our schedules, our operations. We're optimizing schedules that are already optimized enough. I would say in a way they're already, I think at the straining point, but we keep going towards optimizing them further. And I get why. Clearly this is, this is not healthy and it's not sustainable. And I wonder, someone with your experience, you, you must have put yourself through quite some strain and hard work to achieve what you have achieved during your career. Looking at the state of the workplace today, do you see substantial differences between your professional journey and the environment you operated in versus someone who is now at the beginning of their own career development?

Speaker B: Uh, let me answer that second one first. I think there is a fundamental difference, right? I mean I started about 25 years ago. I think there was a real focus on, let's call it community, let's call it culture, on living up to the values that you've stated on your website and that were plastered all over your walls. There was a real uh, interest in helping young people through their career. And there was also, I would say it was a clearer journey, was much, much more clear what those steps look like in terms of uh, progressing now. Especially on that last point, I don't think it's the fault of these companies that that's no longer the case with the speed of artificial intelligence, but also the speed of changing geopolitical environment. I think that it's much more difficult to kind of manage the expectations of what will occur in one, two, three years. Right. So I think that's not something that we can, we can put the blame on the companies for. But I think uh, overall there's been less of an interest on the actual individual. They like looking at the group, but not necessarily on the individuals that compose that group.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: M. It's basically saying we want, we want to preserve the forest, but it's okay to cut down the individual trees. At some point, um, that forest is going to be gone. And I think, look, for me the driver was also having kids to start reevaluating my life choices because like you said, I was spending a lot of time at work and when not at work, also traveling an incredible amount. Right? So you're not home more than, more than one or two days a week. Um, you know, when, when you're, when your partner is also working, it doesn't feel as bad. When you have kids you feel on what you're missing out and uh, it kind of changes your, your thought. Right. And I think that's biological. I don't think that's by, by mistake, it's by design. But needless to say, I think that it is, it is a much more challenging environment for uh, young people to, to come up in also mainly because of that freedom. Right. You kind of become both kind of victim and perpetrator because it's auto exploitive. You're the one driving yourself to do this. But at some point there should be an adult in the room to say, like, this pace is not sustainable, right. And I know a lot of people, and I used to also tell the young people at uh, the firms that I worked with because I was also promoted quite young to partner. And one of the, one of the kind of intentional decisions I made was to slow down before getting promoted, right? And that was to say, look, I know I've been working 80 plus hours. I don't intend to do that forever. If me working at a normal pace is still within your parameters for promoting me, then I'm absolutely happy to accept. But if it's not, then I'm also happy being where I am because I think people make the mistake that, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to kind of kill myself at work, but once I get promoted to this level, then I can slow down. I mean, they promoted you to that level on the basis that you're going to continue working at the level you've been working, not to have you slow down. So I think it comes as a real shock when that's not, when that's not possible, leading further to burnout. Because you had it in your. It's, it's the equivalent of running a marathon, thinking that you're about to finish and then being told, oh, this is, this is an ultra marathon. You got another 50 kilometers ahead of you. I mean, if you knew that in the beginning you would pace yourself, you would be ready for it to know at the finish line. It's really difficult to then extend out that, that additional length mark.

Speaker A: You know, you touched on something. I think it's crucial and I want to unpack that a little bit further. Um, at the beginning you said that pass, um, me the term back in the days, yeah, there was, there was a bit more care put into, let's call it a human to human connection or at least mentorship. And uh, these days we're delegating a lot to AI. We're making the workplace a little less human. We, like you said, no one knows exactly how that will end. But, um, you, you wrote that, I believe in a recent piece, uh, of your newsletter that, um, organizations obviously are social organisms and in uh, a way we need to protect that human capital. How do we go about that? How do we reconnect to the way things used to be? And you think, is there a way to do that?

Speaker B: I think there is. I think it also comes down to involvement. I think what you're seeing a lot, if you look at like Klarna has been all over the news on their reduction of workforce with the replacement of AI and so forth. Now, you also see it in manufacturing where people are, you know, told to put on these cameras that basically look at everything that they're doing throughout the day to then be able to replicate it with either a humanoid robot or some other automated mechanism.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I think there's something disingenuous about that. I think you're. You're forcing the involvement of that employee to basically train his, uh, or her replacement. And to not. To not do that openly, I think is very disingenuous. I think we're doing that also in, in professional services. I think we're, we're being very careful to, to be transparent because the goal might also include reduced workforces and so smaller companies. So how can you really build trust with the remaining workforce if they're feeling like, well, you know, it's just a matter of time until they also come for what I'm doing. And one of my big, big hopes of this entire AI revolution that we're seeing or transformation is, you know, when we, when we started this discussion about the Singularity, and, and uh, Ray Kurzweil was big in that space and what the Singularity would look like, and I think the question became really, what is artificial general intelligence? And, and then the question becomes, well, uh, well, what is consciousness? When. How will we. So outside of the Turing Test, what. How do we. We say that this machine is now conscious? I can't define that, but I think that the investigation into those questions will lead us to realize we're asking actually what does it mean to be human? And anything we can do to deeper look into answering that question, I think is going to be a net benefit to society where all of us are reflecting a bit more on what it actually means to be human. And to take that now to the, to the business perspective, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't see AI models making business decisions directly. I think you're still going to be dealing with sellers and buyers of either services, products or whatever. I think a lot of that is still going to be based on relationships. Right. So, I mean, uh, like I mentioned before the call m, I'm renovating my home now. A lot of the decisions I'm making are not around the, the price, but on the feeling that I have for the person promising to deliver that, that service or product right where I feel comfortable. Because, you know, there's a lot of research that shows that the vast majority of the decisions that we make are instant they're instinct. Right. And there is, there is uh, a reason why we have feelings about people, right. And it's, I think it's a bad idea to go against that. I think it's going to be very difficult to program that. So I'm optimistic that those people who are able to maintain strong relationships, who are able to communicate effectively to other humans, are going to, um, always be valuable. Right. Especially as we move into industries. And you see this from the Stanford research scenario in the coal mine, that as you see software engineering jobs decreasing or the request for them decreasing, you're seeing uh, a corresponding increase in the need for healthcare workers, for nurses, for caretakers, those very human jobs. So I think that that's also reflective of what we're looking for. We're looking for much stronger human to human connections, uh, from, from every perspective, right. In every industry. So I'm optimistic that that will hopefully become the case even stronger.

Speaker A: You said it's. And I agree with that. It's difficult to place the responsibilities on companies. No one has a, um, has a crystal ball. Everyone is in a way keeping up. And I understand, I perfectly understand the idea that the company needs to, in a way, um, shield their bottom line and all of that. This being said, I know we tend to put a lot of pressure on people managers and leaders these days, but, uh, is there anything you think a people manager listening to this could do concretely to um, in a way build trust with their team, reassure them that things will be okay, and uh, somehow put some positive thoughts out there for the future?

Speaker B: I think those two things might be exclusive of each other. Right. So to build trust in the team might be saying things might not be okay. Right. This is, this is the situation that we're in. All of us might not be here in six months or in a year, but to build trust is to be transparent about that. And the other thing is there a number of cases where either I or others have had to kind of, let's say, fire people, right. Separate them from the firm. In every single one of those cases, those people are better off now than they were before. And you can do that very openly. Say, look, if I, as a people manager see that there's difficulty with your employment, with your performance, with your relation to others, then of course that person feels it as well. It's not going to come as an enormous shock to that person that this isn't really working out. You know, there's, it's, it's also just about finding the right environment for you. Just because you're placed in an environment that doesn't, let's say, value your skills as other environments might, or it doesn't see the potential that you have in other areas. Right. Then you might need to change that environment and be wildly successful in a, in a new area and your people manager can help you do that. Right. These people are usually well connected within their networks. They are able to evaluate the talents this person is showing and also those talents that they would likely have as well that aren't shown within their, their current role and be able to help them find other employment. Helping someone leave might build even more trust in those who, who remained. Not to mention you're also maintaining your network. That person has now left. Who knows, in a year they might be a customer, they might be, uh, they might come back as a leader to, to your firm after a stint somewhere else. I think it's always good to be good. Right. And it does. Again, it's not always being nice. Nice would be okay, well we'll keep them on the payroll and, or just let them do anything good is to say, listen, you can, you can be doing much better somewhere else. Let's, let's figure out how to do that.

Speaker A: Mark, we have uh, let's say in the minute or what we have left. As we are heading towards the end of the conversation. Can I end on a rather personal question?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: When you stepped back from the corporate world, and I'm saying step back and I'm take it lightly, but did you notice anything about your own, I don't want to say necessarily mental state, but about your own identity that you couldn't see while you were inside it?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of things happened. I physically, I became much healthier. Right. But that was just because then I had the, the time to focus on it. I also realized that I was much more present. Right. Because in many of these jobs, again because you're driven by freedom. That freedom is check your emails constantly. Right. It's not, I need, I need to respond within 24 hours. I can shut it off at 6 in the evening and pick it up again tomorrow morning. It's you're constantly that creates this constant partial attention which means that also sitting down to dinner with your kids, playing with that phone is always there and you're sharing your attention with that phone instead of fully focusing on what you're doing. And I don't want to make this like some cushy thing just about, about children. I mean that in everyday life, I mean in everything that you're doing. You should be present and focusing just on that. That one thing that you're doing. Forget about this multitasking. Do them in a series, but focus fully on what it is that you're doing. And I can tell you one of the greatest mentors that I had at work. There was one thing that everyone recognized with him. Whenever you walked into his office, his computer would shut off. He would move everything off of his in front of him and just focus on you. Think about what that feels like. Think about what it feels like when you go out for a coffee and that phone never comes out on the table. It just stays in in your bag. You're fully focused on that person. That person feels that right. And I think I had great strides in that particular area after and I feel like I've carried them into the work that I'm doing now and into the relationships that I have.

Speaker A: Mark, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you very much for making the time and I hope we can sometime.

Speaker B: I can't wait. I can't wait. And good luck with this. I think is the focus is exactly what people need to be hearing about. And I wish you really great success with this podcast.

Speaker A: I very much appreciate it. Thank you, Mark.

Speaker B: Hey, thanks.