502 - The Eras Tour: Part 3 (The hybrid period)

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Mind Tools, L and D podcast, a weekly show about work, performance and, um, learning. I'm Ross Garner and, uh, this week we are continuing our 500th anniversary celebrations with the third part of our eras tour, revisiting the hybrid years from 2021 to 2023. I'm joined by return guest Rob Baker, who we last spoke to way back in 2021. Hello, Rob. How have you been?

Speaker B: I've been well. Yeah, I think, I think we've all aged really well, I think in those last years. Right. Those last three years. I feel like also I should have bought party poppers and I haven't.

Speaker A: So we've aged like fine wine. And, uh, we're joined by the Ed Sheeran to my Taylor Swift, Ross Dickey.

Speaker C: Hello, Ross D. Sure, I care for that analogy, but, uh, okay.

Speaker A: Would you rather be tea?

Speaker C: Sure, yeah, let's do that. Okay.

Speaker A: Um, Rob, I had a look at when you were last back on the show. It was November 2021. Um, you kind of lose track of that period and all the ins and outs, the lockdown, the lockups, all that kind of stuff. Um, so, uh, in November 2021, if you remember, the UK had come out of its lockdowns and was deep into figuring out what hybrid and remote work would look like. And then weeks after we spoke, there was the COVID Omicron variant and we were all encouraged from home again. But I think at that time there was a lot of enthusiasm for job crafting and I think more like just work life balance and taking more control of your life. We all had sort of experience working from home and thought this is actually okay. Um, was it having a moment then? Or was, uh, it a dream, A fever dream?

Speaker B: Was it all, was it all a dream? I think, uh, from a job crafting perspective, I don't think that level of agency and autonomy at home would be very different depending on everyone's contacts. Right. In terms of their own settings. But I certainly, when we run workshops today in 2026 and we ask people to talk about, kind of think about when they've personalized their work or optimized their work in positive ways, often people will refer back to times during COVID where they've had to shift and change and personalize that what they were doing, like when they were working, how they were doing, how they were juggling things, and it was, there wasn't necessarily the need to ask for permission or get sign offs or kind of have to argue the case. It was just an acceptance. Everyone could just crack on and do it. So I don't think it was necessarily in the ideal circumstances, but certainly when people say when have you actively done this? People are oh yeah, we were doing it all the time in Covid. So it definitely was a thing there and definitely create opportunities for people.

Speaker A: It was kind of a weird one for me because I was already working from home long before it was cool. But Ross, you uh, ah, had you started working from home during ah, Covid? Did you craft your job into its perfect state and now you've managed to maintain?

Speaker C: I think um, kind of as Rob has alluded to, maybe it wasn't the ideal circumstances, but organizations were forced into the position to give um, to give employees much more autonomy over how they spent the time, um, and how they crafted their jobs I think. And there's a lot of flexibility around that. At the same time I wouldn't want to. I had a pretty good experience I would say it was. A lot of the work I was doing was online already. So I was just going into an office and spending a lot of time on video calls. And then we'd also have the commute back and forth. So be able to cut that out, have a bit more flexibility around work was great but a lot of people found it socially isolating. A lot of people had kids at home, were working from small spaces. And so for some, I mean for some people it was a dream. For others it was maybe a bit of a nightmare that they were glad to see end. And um, you know I think we're sort of framing this as oh, it was a great time of um, flexibility and people were able to sort of work fit work around their lives, which is great. Um, I think that was true for some people, maybe not true for others.

Speaker A: Yeah, that was definitely true. And the um, I think a big part of it was just that uh, I mean m. To an extent the jailer's back was turned. You know, like the ah, organizational leadership was trying to just like keep their businesses moving forward or deal with like furlough schemes or lots of people were offset and how do we get even like the tech infrastructure and set up so that people can collaborate and all this kind of stuff. So the like, which particular building you happen to be in, uh, Ross, or whether you're starting at 9 or 8:30 or 9:30 just wasn't a concern. But I think that concern had then crept in. It came back and then you saw a lot of like return to work mandates. You would see tracking of uh, how often people were on teams, I know someone who had, uh, they bought themselves one of those USB devices that would move your mouse so that your team's light would stay green.

Speaker B: A mouse whittler or something. There's a term for it, isn't there?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Um, so, uh, I mean, did job crafting lose relevance, Rob?

Speaker B: So, no, actually, I think the opposite. So I think that actually when people have come back to the. To the office, there has been opportunities for people to really think about, see what works, what works for them. I think what we found is for some organizations, not for every organization at all, but there was a sense of maybe in the media a little bit, but it's Pandora's box. Like, the COVID like, gave everyone this opportunity. They saw this kind of shiny autonomy, like the ability to flexibility, and all of a sudden now they're like, oh, the genie's out the bottle. How can we put it back in the bottle? Like, with glitter. Like, the glitter's out. It's like, how do we get the glitter back? Which is always really, really, really difficult. Where I think the most enlightened organizations now are sitting are in a space where they were saying, actually, what are the principles we want to work towards in terms of. In the space. So in terms of how can we do those principles? Not that necessarily is going to per se, but that's. You're going to suit the business and our customers, but also the individual as well. And having that round of kind of conversation and crafting sits in that. In that space. So, for example, now working with, in workshops with people, people are saying, actually, how can I craft the opportunities to maximize those opportunities in that hybrid, in a hybrid way? If you're, if you're working hybrid. So actually, I'm coming into the office two days a week, right? That means I'm going to do a commute. And some people that are four days a week and some people that would be like one day a week, and some people would be one. So 4. It'd be different for different people. But how do I set up the environment, match it to the best work that I want to do? So if you're coming in two days a week, I want to have a. I might have a commute. So that mean I'm going to actually save up my favorite podcast. Like, this might be a favorite podcast that people have. Other podcasts are available and say, like, that's going to be part of my treat, or I'm going to read, I'm going to watch a box set. I'm going to read a book. I'm going to make the most of that commute. Uh, I might think about relational crafting. So how I'm going to boost my relationships with the people that I'm in there, the space. So actually I'm going to make sure I have a lunch break or go and um, catch up, go and have a coffee at the local barista, sell coffee rather than my Nespresso at home, which is never quite the same. Right. And enjoy that with a, with a, with a, with a colleague. Am I going to actually use this as an opportunity to pursue something I'm passionate about? So actually join a committee of working group about sustainability or well being or whatever because I'm there and I can be part of that group and that's easier to do in person than it's. Then I'm not. And then the flip side of that when I'm at home is like how do I structure that day so that I'm focused and able to work at my best? How do I optimize for that position? And so I think the opportunities to personalize work are definitely available at home and they are available, um, in the office as well. And in that hybrid way, what job crafting does is it creates the opportunity for the conversation about saying what's going to work best for you in your context within the organization. And how do we also match that with what your team needs from you, what your colleagues need from you, what the client means from you. And often we don't knit those things together. We kind of like do one or the other. We think you can only have individual autonomy or we can only have a set of rules about what the organization needs. And actually where the magic happens is when you have an adult conversation in the middle and you can say, right, this is what we need. But how can you deliver it in a way that best match your skills and strengths?

Speaker A: I became conscious there that um, I hadn't asked you what job crafting was, but I think you've actually described it quite well just in the way that you described. Ah, that I am curious because um, you're consultancy tiered thinking you help organizations do this, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Who do you work with and who do you not work with? I'm so curious.

Speaker B: Interesting question. So job crafting just very quickly is around personalizing how you think, act and interact at work. So like the task you do, how you, how you interact with other people and how you think about the purpose and value of the work that you do. And job crafting in a nutshell is just saying taking small steps to personalize that, to optimize that for you in a positive way. Uh, and typically small things tend that's going to take you 10 to 12 minutes a day or an hour a week. So not kind of redesigning your job but just making small changes to it.

Speaker A: So I understand why employees like that. I understand why employees like that. I'm curious, why do companies pay you to do that?

Speaker B: Why do companies.

Speaker A: Well, and then think about it. Because I'm curious, who doesn't.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they'll come back to the. Who doesn't like it. So we have had the space where someone says, where does jawcrafting not work? So number one, it needs to be uh, a genuine invitation for people to say, look, we want you to actually optimize your work so we can see the benefit for you to be able to do that if that is kind of inauthentic. So in terms of actually people don't really believe it or if it's being gatekeeped by managers. So actually on one hand you're saying you should do this, another hand your manager's saying actually. But Ross, why are you leaving at 4 o'? Clock? And you're like, well I'm leaving at 4 o' clock because I started at 8 and I want to get home to go to the running club or pick up my kit, whatever that will be. And it's like if you've got conflicts or dissonance there, that actually sets you back further than not even introducing the idea in the first instance. So organizations that don't get this genuinely when we're pitching it, it's like, do you actually want your individuals to be, to optimize their role for performance? But also from a wellbeing perspective too. And the organizations that we've kind of not. No one says no, we don't want this. Like no leader is going to say no. We don't want people to enjoy work, but we don't have those follow up conversations afterwards or maybe we don't get in the room in the first instance. So I think we're very open in terms of saying this is about optimization for people that will actually support performance. It will support kind of well being and it will also support kind of potentially career mobility. Lots of strong drivers to most organization strategies there. But what you need to do is give a little bit of freedom to your employees and you've got to be able to tolerate that level of freedom. We do sometimes get a tension between the HR and people function l And D function who get this and saying, we need this, we can come in, but we just don't ever get the opportunity to kind of take it further because there isn't that, uh, from a leadership perspective, it's like actually the chief finance M officer. We need more control, we have less flexibility. That's what we're looking for. So I think there's definitely organizations. I'm not going to name names in that space. We have only had. We're getting pretty good at sniffing this out. And we've only had, I think, one scenario that really has, I'd say, backfired a little bit in terms of actually where I think there's a tension between us working with people getting excited about the ideas and then the blowback of them feeling that that wasn't able to happen. And we had a very dispirited group. And I was very. We're all about having impact in our work. And I remember being really kind of frustrated with that, with that engagement.

Speaker C: You referred, I think, in your previous answer to sort of what more evolved organizations are doing in this space. And it strikes me that it's a really difficult balance to get right. So I was talking to a, uh, friend this week who works for a financial services company. And, um, she, like many, um, people who work for large corporates, is required to come into the office three days a week. But this organization doesn't require her to be in the office for the entirety of those three days. She basically just needs to clock in. So she spent basically an hour a day, three days a week at the office so that she's swiped her badge and doesn't attract any scrutiny. And on the one hand, that kind of works out well for her because she really, I think, would rather work from home all the time so she can go in office isn't that far away. Um, but it's not a particularly productive use of her time. It's not probably a particularly productive use of the organization type of resource in that respect either. But then I think the challenge that we had mine tools, Kineo. We're a fully remote company. I don't want to speak too much about remote versus hybrid, because I know that's not all that job crafting is about. But, um, I think that people associate that with sort of autonomy. We were given the choice, I think, about whether we wanted to come back into the office or office in Edinburgh. It's the closest office to me, uh, and Ross. And nobody did because we were given the choice. Um, and so it's just A really difficult balance to strike, I think for organizations. I love what you're saying about, like think about if you're going to be in the office these days, how you make the most of that time and what you do those days that is best done in the office versus what's best done remotely. But at the same time, a lot of your schedule, day to day, depending on what role you're in or what sort of level of seniority you're in, is not. You don't have the autonomy to decide that. It's determined by what meetings you're invited to or what clients you have to meet who might not be, uh, geographically co located with you. So it's um. Yeah, it just seems like a really tricky problem and hybrid almost seems like it can be the worst of both worlds.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think. Well, I think there's a couple definitely like um, badge kind of. Or badge or coffee shopping or something. There's a word, there's a term for it. Someone will know on this, listening to the podcast for that exact terminology of people kind of swiping in and out. Like I think, I think. And that just seems to be like just stupid in terms of a time wastage for everyone. And I think also every time you're doing it, I imagine there's a bit of you like your care about the business is disappearing away every time you kind of swipe your bags. Because I'm doing this just because you're m making me do this. Where I think just on that though,

Speaker A: Rob, um, I bet no one intends for that to be the case though. I bet that is an accidental consequence of a whole heap of decisions. Like no one's decided. We just want someone to tap their badge and then go home after an hour.

Speaker B: There will be people within that organization, I bet, will know that's happening, like effectively, whether they want to highlight it because actually the metrics are showing the figures that the organization wants to do. I don't know. But they will not be. There'll be not noticed. There'll be other people doing it. Uh, and I think it's like, then it's around like what are you tolerating as an organization? What you're willing to tolerate?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, yeah, you were going to be controversial, Rob. Sorry, before I interrupted.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, no, no, I think where I also think this is. I say my controversial view on this is that

Speaker C: I.

Speaker B: Sometimes we do things for ourselves that feel easy. So like working from home, for example. It's easy and it's more time efficient. We can Switch off and we can do loads of. There's so many great things about it. But there is a correlation there between sometimes if you're more at risk of being lonely or detached, that's going to potentially become worse or could have actually, uh, amplified by working from home. So it will actually potentially be better for that individual to be having some interaction face to face interaction. But that requires effort from that individual to do that and they may not want to. So I think there's also a tension here in terms of. I'm not saying people are grown up so they can make decisions for themselves, but I do also think that there is. Giving people choice doesn't necessarily mean we're going to make the best decisions for ourselves or the best decision for our work either. And again, I'm happy to separate those because I think maybe decision for ourselves maybe should trump decisions for work. Right. But I think there's the link together. So we might just say, yeah, I'm feeling a bit lonely. I'm not maybe as engaged as I should be, but it's really great for me to be able to work from home. So that's what I'm going to vote for. And so I think there's a tension there and I think it's quite a nuanced one. I don't know the answer to that, but I think that's something I'd say about you saying when people vote for it, I wonder whether that is also the healthiest decision for the individuals and for the organization. Don't know.

Speaker A: I mean we closed our offices eventually. That was where our. Or voting with our feet and not using the office and actually led to us going fully remote, um, as well as just a degree of, um. Once people started working remotely, more than just me, we began hiring remotely and there was just a kind of volume of like a proportion of the population here at Mountains Kino just were so far away that going into the office didn't make sense anymore. Um, it has been five years, Rob, since we were last on the show and I'm curious ah, how the kind of research into job design has, has gone. Um, what does the evidence say about whether job crafting actually moves the needle on performance and well being?

Speaker B: Yeah, ah, it's been, the research has been really prolific. There's been a special journal of um, the Journal of Business Psychology that's just been kind of produced this year for Arnold Bakker and Gavin Slim and they've got some like, specialists really shining a spotlight on job crafting and in that journal and I can maybe share the screenshot of this is like tracks publications of job crafting since 2001 to where we are kind of today. And we started off, the first paper was written job crafting 2001 by Amy M. Wineski and Jane Dutton in 2025. I think it's 400 publications and management publications. Scholarly research on job crafting as a concept is really, really robust. And we are increasingly continuing to see a strong correlation between job crafting behavior and outcomes such as performance and well being and career kind of mobility and satisfaction and engagement. So there's really strong relationships. But what we also find, and we can maybe dig into this is more nuance in this as well. So actually we're finding some types of job crafting maybe have better outcomes from a wellbeing perspective or from uh, an engagement and happiness perspective compared with other types of job crafting. And there's some nuance there that we didn't maybe we started to see 2005 but we didn't 2023 whenever we were kind of meeting that actually we know a bit more about that and so we're actually understanding who job crafting suits. There's also been an interesting paper recently written about the uh, actually who are the ideal people to craft. So actually if you've got massive autonomy, actually the impact of crafting is less than diminished compared with people who are uh, maybe on the kind of have lower levels of kind of autonomy and they're really thirsty for it. And so actually those individuals were really thirsty for it and, and they're encouraged to do it. It's like, oh, this is amazing. I'm quenching my thirst here for autonomy because if you are maybe a senior manager or working an organization where actually you've got loads of all the autonomy you want, it's like, well, I've got this anyway. I'm not going to, yes, I'll benefit from it, but I'm not going to see as dramatic a benefit or value it in the same way as someone who's maybe got that thirst for that autonomy. So we can talk a bit more about that if you want. But the evidence is really showing that when people take control of their work, they're encouraged to personalize their work, to make their work a bit more them, to show their strengths and passions a little bit. Again, small changes can have a big impact to that individual and particularly around performance. In terms of people's ratings of performance, their managers, ratings of performance, customer ratings of performance, they've measured it in so many different ways now, like looking at really strong from a wellbeing perspective, really strong again in terms of people feel a greater sense of control. But it also with showing um, that it buffers stress as well. So people in stressful examples, some of this comes out from COVID Those are able to personalize their work in a positive way, were able to buffer stress compared with those that weren't. Some of that was self kind of found for those individuals themselves. And some of that was taught effectively where people have been encouraged to do it. So we're doing it different ways.

Speaker A: If you are teaching people the. Because you said that some, some strategies were more effective than others. What.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I, uh, think this is particularly relevant for an L and D audience. What would you uh, I guess what would you teach someone about job crafting that's going to optimize their outcome?

Speaker B: So I'm again I'll be really clear about good and bad types of crafting. But what we see because this is emerging, but it's because we're a great understanding of why this is happening. Of certain types of crafting feel good, um, compared with those that don't. So job crafting. One way of um, distinguishing between different types is the researchers refer to approach crafting and avoidance crafting. So approach crafting is generative. So typically doing new things, it's maybe doing some, finding something you're interested in and doing more of that work. So for me that could be. I like research, I like writing. So it's like doing more research, doing more writing. That's a generative kind of, um, activity. Avoidance crafting or protect. Prohibitive.

Speaker A: Avoiding unpleasant colleagues.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Avoiding unpleasant colleagues.

Speaker A: Moving to America and joining a podcast. Ross's strategy.

Speaker B: Yes. Avoiding difficult conversations, avoiding difficult people. Um, could be around, um, protecting your time. So saying no to things like doing less overtime, that in of itself can be positive from a wellbeing perspective, that could lead to benefits. But it doesn't feel good. Um, in the same way it's not celebrated. You kind of do it quietly. You don't necessarily high five. Ross. I've deliberately kind of like not spoken to that person today or I've deliberately.

Speaker C: I've said I don't have time to do this this week. And someone else.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that's brilliant. And some. There will be pockets of people that will celebrate that and recognize that's a coaching thing that someone needs to work on. But the majority of things, you're not doing that very loudly. You're not saying, I'm leaving on time today. Like you're not you. But you might say I worked an extra two hours to do that report. That's celebrated. So that what we find from a research, from a perspective is in terms of if you say job crafting always feels good, it's like that isn't necessarily the case. So you've got to be realistic. When we're working with people now, we're much more nuanced in terms of saying, what do you feel you need as an individual? But let's be realistic about how you think that's going to feel. Like actually I am going to get benefits from saying no to work or giving myself a bit more space because actually I'm feeling burnt out and frazzled. And yeah, that might give me a chance to uh, rejuvenate a little bit. But in the same sense that's not going to feel maybe as uh, attractive to myself as saying I should be picking up and volunteering or doing some more research or putting my hand up for that next project or whatever that is, which is more generative orientated. So that's where I would say we've got a bit of a better understanding at the moment and where I think there's some nuance around the different types of crafting, the different directions of crafting.

Speaker A: Well, you mentioned generative, which is taking ah, us tantalizingly close to discussing AI Just before I ask my final question.

Speaker B: How have we got to this time already?

Speaker A: No AI this is the longest we've gone for uh, two years and not mentioned AI but we will get there folks, don't worry. Friend of the show AI will be here shortly. So it strikes me that we're all crafting our jobs now insofar as we're all adjusting to um, the appearance, uh, emergence, explosion, uh, whatever. You pick a word, ah, of AI. And some of us are crafting because um, we find it interesting and we see benefits and some of it's being done to us and we like it a little bit less. Is that still job crafting in the spirit that you talk about it, or has AI kind of curdled it into something much more anxiety provoking?

Speaker B: Oh, has it curled into something more m. I think again, it context matters. Like you've definitely worked with some organizations and individuals. Like I've given this AI co pilot. I don't know what to do with it. Like, oh, but I know I should be doing something with it or. And I'm worried that if I do too much with it, it's going to have an impact on my job. I think there's definitely some of those anxieties around that we should need, we need to be careful of and considerate about. And again it's context around how message is delivered. Right. In terms of how things uh, uh, there's a very different scenario when people are saying we want you to make your work better using AI and here's some tools to be able to do it versus as an organization we're about finding productivity and efficiency every step of the way. And oh by the way, here's some AI like it would be great if you could think about how you could maybe half your job effectively or something to that perspective where people are maybe going to be more nervous and anxious about it. So but where geographing fits in. And I think it fits in really well. I was presenting last year at a conference on this, um, is around AI crafting. So this is still very emergent. So in terms of we come back in, in five years, another five years we'll probably. All the research that we're doing on AI crafting will be, will know more about it. But what we're finding is that AI can be a really um, helpful conduit or meta skill to help people adapt and adopt using AI. So if you are using AI from the lens of saying how can you make your job better? Think about the things that give you energy or maybe the things that take energy from you and saying how can we use AI to create more space for you to do that? So for me as a thinking partner, I love it saying out loud when I'm thinking about writing something, it doesn't write for me. But if it's like I will get it to share some ideas and thinking about have you thought about this? Or miss what have I missed? And I really enjoy that kind of back and forth, back and forth. And um, for me that's, that's positive, that's interesting, that's a way of crafting in terms of that perspective. I similarly from we talked about avoidance crafting. I'm really interested in this idea of what things I don't like doing. I hate trying to reschedule meetings and like share people my calendar, go back and look at it and do things. And I haven't cracked this yet. But I'm like is there a great agent or way I can do this to read my calendar to immediately say I need to give Ross three, three slots. Like can you, can you do that? And for some people I will give them my premium slots and for Others I won't like, I'll be less, I'll be less generous, very generous to be fair in terms of. So if I'm trying to protect time, I might break that time for some people for certain contexts, whereas I might not break that time for others. So how do you get some nuance in that space? Haven't fixed that with AI, but I'm interested, I'm enjoying that bit of discovery about kind of how to do that. So that's using it for that avoidance kind of task. So we're finding from a research perspective that, and from a practical perspective, working with organizations, that job crafting can be a great vessel, a mechanism to say we want you to make your work better using AI. This is, if you look at it through this idea of crafting, personalizing your work, give people that tools, that information, that knowledge, that excitement, then we've AI onto it. It can be really powerful.

Speaker C: Well, we had Heidi Kirby on the show a few months ago in the context of AI and learning design. The thing that sort of stood out to me that she said was think um, about the part of the process that you find least enjoyable and get AI to do that. It's the sort of AI should be doing my laundry, not, you know, not creating our sort of argument, which I think is great in principle if you can, if you have the autonomy to do that. The other side of it I think is that individuals are probably best placed to figure out where the productivity gains are going to come in their workflows rather than organizations saying you must use AI for this particular use case. On the other hand, the part of the job that you enjoy most might be copywriting, which is possibly the thing that AI is best placed to take up. And actually um, I don't know, uploading a scorm package to an LMS probably can't get ChatGPT to do that. AI is probably involved with those workflows in some way. But ah, there is again a bit of a tension I think there between actually how much autonomy we give people over their use of AI, um, and um, what's actually best for the organization. How organizations want people to use these tools.

Speaker A: I think as well one of the big risks is as you use AI to make your own job better, there's a real risk that you make other people's job worse.

Speaker B: Oh, for sure.

Speaker A: Oh, I could produce this 5,000 word report and uh, share it with the entire team for them to read. Is that necessary? What was it you were trying to achieve with that? Maybe it was Necessary. But if it was just trying to make yourself look smart, there is a cost to this stuff where other people have to consume it.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think. And so when we're looking at the um, job crafting, when we're introduced we can choose guardrails like for this kind of perspective because again, we live in this space where there's a tension between what the organisation needs and what the individual needs and we want them to be aligned but also recognize that tension. So when, as I said in this work we stole or repurposed this with permission from Sharon Parker. So an amazing job work design researcher, um, in Perth and she talked about wise proactivity. So wise proactivity is saying you need to actually, if you're being proactive, you need to think about it actually from a lens of three perspectives. So how's it going to impact on you? Because actually just doing more, picking up a new task that, that might feel good but it might actually be sustainable for you kind of where you are now. So think about the impact of that. So that 5,000 report was like, what's going to. The impact of you sending that? Is that going to be a good thing? Like not a good thing. Like could people say organization? Yeah, yeah. And then the next bit is around the team. So actually how's this going to impact on your colleagues? So actually if you send this 5000 is not only just reading it, is that going to have an impact in terms of. Actually that goes against what some of the teams are doing or they haven't had an opportunity to buy in, like because GPT has done it, you haven't even consulted them on actually. And you've got fatal error in there that's going to make you look stupid, like, I don't know, like, so that's a team aspect. And then you think about the organizational perspective. So is this crafting going to actually align with the organizational mission purpose kind of values? And it doesn't mean to say you shouldn't do it if it doesn't align to a team or it doesn't align to the organization value. But you should be really, really clear that that's the case and there might be implications of that coming back to bite you on that consequence. And so obviously wisecrafting is around actually and wise AI use is where you're hitting those sweet spot where you're thinking about, yes, it helps me, it helps my colleagues and it helps the organization or it doesn't interfere with my colleagues, it doesn't in fact of me negatively of the Business. That's how I, and I think those three principles are really simple and solid. And every time we kind of introduce it, most people like, yeah, that makes, that makes sense.

Speaker A: Okay, we are going to take a quick break and then we will return for what I learned this week. So I received, uh, an email from a colleague, uh, last week which I found funny. Ah, I think they were a bit embarrassed by. And at the top of the email it said, uh, here's a more assertive version of what you wanted to say. I got an immediate response saying, sorry, I meant to cut that first part. Um, but I think it does, uh, demonstrate the difficulty of rolling out, ah, enterprise AI tools without giving anyone any guidance whatsoever in how to use them. Here at uh, Mind Tools Kineo, we have been working with, with clients over the past 18 months or so in finance, media, consulting, tech and sport to build AI skills in their organizations. So if you are in the process of rolling out enterprise AI licenses and you're worried about the messy human bit and how they're going to behave once handed such a tool, then please do speak to us. We would love to have a chat about how we can help. You can visit mindtools kenio.com to get in touch or email. Email customindtools uh.com the address again is customindtools.com and uh, I or my colleague Ross Dickey will get in touch. An actual human will respond to your email. Can you imagine? Custometools.com get in touch. Now, on with the show. Um, all right, now let's move on to our regular feature of what I Learned this week where we share something we picked up over the past past seven days and Royal Sticky, what have you learned?

Speaker C: I have learned that. Well, what I've not learned is how to work a new microphone that I purchased. So I am currently in the US and uh, every time I travel and I'm working remotely, I lug around my microphone to record. This podcast takes up tons of space. It's really annoying. And so I thought I would get a nice little, um, DJI mic mini which are, uh, highly reviewed. You'll have seen them everywhere if you're, uh, if you watch any of these sort of influencer videos on social media. And uh, I spent the first 10 minutes of this podcast trying to get it to connect and um, eventually gave up and just used my Bluetooth earphones. So I've not learned that this week, but I'm going to try and figure it out before I record the next one. Probably should have tried to figure out in advance. So maybe that's the thing that I learned is, uh, preparation goes a long way.

Speaker A: Imagine learning that after 500 episodes. Yeah, 10 minutes, time to get your microphone to work. And when it did work, you had nothing to say. Rob, what have you learned this week?

Speaker B: So an area that I've been really interested in is around the art, uh, of subtraction. So there's a Burke and podcast I've written, and I've written about this today on LinkedIn. Um, there's a Nature paper published about four years ago, really looking at the art of subtraction and actually recognizing this is a bias that we have is that we're not very good at humans as subtracting from things. So we've talked already today about avoidance and kind of prohibitive crafting versus kind of generative crafting. And it's going to feel as good. And actually this nature public, they looked at this in lots of different ways and they gave people lots of different puzzles and tasks where the most elegant solution was often to take something away rather than add to it. So they did Lego tasks where they had to place a brick on an unstable platform and all you need to do is take one of the things away and then it, like, made it more level. But actually what everyone did was trying to build the structure up more to put the brick on. And they did a puzzle where they were like, looking and trying to make things symmetrical. And it was much more efficient to take things away from that picture to make it symmetrical rather than add things. But people naturally wanted to add things. And I just think it's. It's something that I spot all the time and I spot in myself is that when I'm approaching something like, what can I do more? Uh, what can I miss? And we kind of really interested in that rather than actually thinking about what could we take away. So that's what I've just been fascinated about and geeking about this week.

Speaker A: So I learned this week, uh, I was reading today the results of a, ah, study, ah, that, um, it found that by 2028 half of all AI roles could go unfulfilled. And our colleague Rodrigo Bolanhos was in People Management commenting on this. Um, but basically we're not training enough people to use this technology. And, uh, the normal approach to this is to go through things like universities, apprenticeships and so on, but they just take too long. And I think what struck me was that the biggest barrier to AI adoption is us and our reluctance to change. But also maybe that's okay. Because it kind of was this natural break on something that might, might wipe us out, you know, not really sure. So kind of, um, we're all adjusting, I think. Uh, uh, Rodrigo has uh, described it as a global change management exercise and it's just going to take a while. And um, yeah, and saying that if you were wondering what to do in 2028, upskilling and um, an AI specialism would possibly be the way to go. And um, that's it. That is all from us. Uh, Rob, I suspect lots of listeners are interested in, uh, job crafting. Now where might they find out how you can help them do that?

Speaker B: Well, it'd be wonderful if people are interested about finding more about job crafting and personalizing work. And the best thing to do is just probably Google job crafting and Rob Baker or tailored thinking and you'll be um, littered probably with lots of, um, different articles and other research. So the place that people say where do I go to? Is just TailoredThinking.co.uk and there's different elements around job crafting. That would be a good, a good starting point.

Speaker A: Lovely. We will link to that in the show notes as well. Uh, Ross, anything you'd like to add?

Speaker C: Nope.

Speaker A: Well, if you'd like to get in touch with man of many words, Ross Dickey, uh, or myself, um, then, uh, were very easy to find on LinkedIn. You can also, uh, email customindtools.com again if you're interested in uh, building AI skills in your organization. Uh, next week, the epic conclusion to our ERAS tour. We're welcoming back Don Taylor. Yes, the Don Father. To look at the impact that artificial intelligence has had on literally everything. Until then, thanks for listening and thank you Rob for taking part.

Speaker B: Thank you.