The TalentStories Podcast: Recent Episodes
Aki Taha & Usman Sheikh
Welcome to TalentStories, where we explore how to keep up with -- and thrive in -- the fast-changing world of work/
Each week, in the TalentStories newsletter, we highlight three stories -- 3 curated insights - from across the world of work, and send those straight to your inbox. You can sign up for the newsletter at talentstories.com.
Then, here, on the TalentStories podcast -- we bring those stories to life; we go a level deeper together, get to ask what they might mean for us.
This week, in issue #71 of the TalentStories newsletter, “The Great Thinning Out of the Traditional Firm”, a visit to the city of San Francisco is cause to explore the massive dispersion happening at work. San Francisco happens to be on the cutting edge of work so you feel, acutely, the decentralizing effects of the pandemic, of shifting work norms, and of a decade of technological change.
But here's the thing: it's not just employees who are decentralizing; who are leaving this city, and leaving bigger firms. The firms themselves are consciously and unconsciously thinning themselves out.
Today, our stories explore how and why. And taken together, they also prompt us to ask: if the supply of workers continues to shrink -- to decentralize, if not opt out of traditional work altogether -- and if technology simultaneously causes firms to reduce demand for talent by becoming smaller over time, what happens to the traditional firm, and the labor market? In other words, what happens to work itself?
This week we explore how organizations provide for fundamental human needs like meaning, purpose, connection and belonging. It turns out those needs don't just disappear - poof! - when we get to work. On the contrary, people spend so much time at work, and derive so much meaning from it, that leaders and organizations are invariably asked to provide for these needs. Our Stories today serve as reminders of this responsibility -- but also of the unique opportunity and potential for impact that a leader can have on the people around them.
This week, in issue #69 of the TalentStories newsletter, “How will we work here? Job titles -- and job content -- go haywire in the new world of work”, we use our 3 Stories to ask: given the challenges and changes -- distributed work, technology, demography, connection -- and given the human and business stakes involved, do we need new and dedicated resources within our organizations to be able to define: how will we work here?
In a 1999 study, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson first coined the term "psychological safety". She defined it there as:
"A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. A sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up."
Psychological safety is also a research-backed concept which we now know plays a crucial role in team cohesion and performance. So this week, in issue #68 of the TalentStories newsletter, “(Psychological) Safety First”, we use our 3 Stories this week to come up to speed on it.
The world is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, the effects of which have a vast impact on the economy, on culture and on politics. This week, in issue #67 of the TalentStories newsletter, “It’s getting lonely at work”, we explore the way work – where we spend so many of our waking hours – has become an increasingly lonely place to be, and ask what we can do to make it less so.
Today, we hone in on the idea of "decentralization". We see decentralization happening everywhere: in politics and government, in the media, in banks and finance, in big tech -- and we absolutely see it happening at work.
Decentralization is a reaction to a global erosion of trust and confidence across many of the (centralized) institutions upon which we have relied in decades past.
But it’s not just a move from the center to the fringes -- it also connotes a shift in power. And that (largely zero sum) power shift, in turn, animates so much of what we see happening in 2023.
Today, we use our 3 Stories to explore decentralization at work, on 3 different levels: as a society, on a company-level, and as individuals. And we ask, always, what it means for us as organizations and leaders.
Back in issue #6 of TalentStories we deep-dove into mental health and wellness. Nearly 60 issues later, here in #65, we revisit what are still massive issues at work. How do we strike a balance between needing to treat the symptoms of burnout after the fact, once the damage is already done; versus trying to improve mental health more systemically, at its source – by redesigning the way our organizations and our work are fundamentally structured? Does the true solve not lie in a more wholesale reimagining of our work that is more human? And if so, how much leverage does a manager or leader have to impact teams' mental health and burnout?
This week our 3 Stories help us understand these tensions, and provide us with some concrete steps we can take to assuage the pain, too.
“So many organizations are failing to demonstrate that they appreciate the world has changed. They've yet to acknowledge the pieces on the ground, much less offer a vision for how to pick them up and reassemble them. Even as their people are, clearly, busy doing so. All in all, it's a painful lack of self-awareness, communication, adaptation -- leadership -- that is being modeled to teams that are, in fact, being quite clear about what they want and need: clarity, flexibility, and connection; agency, growth, and purpose.”
In issue #64 of the TalentStories newsletter – “What’s going on at work?” – our 3 Stories are insights and quotes from different observers of work on the great disconnect that's afoot, and the need for leaders to adapt to our changed, never-going-back-to-the-way-it-was world.
Our 3 Stories in issue #63 look at the upside of being an eternal explorer -- as well as the downsides of dabbling without ever committing or focusing on something. Ultimately, we conclude that there are huge gains to be had by learning how and when to go both broad and deep.
The massive lack of trust which organizations have created at work is key to understanding the tectonic shifts happening there. So this week, we use our 3 Stories to highlight the urgent need to repair and reallocate that trust through leadership. We explore what it means to truly lead. And we ask together: if great leadership is such a herculean task, then where do we find the conviction required to do it?
“This week, in issue #61 of TalentStories, “#61 - Maybe your kid oughta study literature, after all? Fear, FOMO and focus in the age of AI” we define our principles for covering AI, by committing to bringing the same open-minded curiosity to it that we do to any other work topic. By seeking to understand it; by taking an optimistic, glass-half-full approach by default. And of course, by leaning -- early, often, and heavily -- into the learning to be had together. 🤝
In this episode, we use our 3 Stories to explore how we can respond to a world in which machines and data are so ubiquitous. A reality that's coming faster and sooner than we can appreciate.
Our 3 Stories are, as always, vehicles for exploration; this week, of the differences in values and perspectives that abound at work, as a function of a workforce now comprised of four distinct generations. What are those differences, how pronounced are they – and are we not responsible for bringing increased awareness of them to the teams and organizations we lead?
“This week, in issue #59 of TalentStories, “If the talent shortage is permanent -- how do we lead?”, we look at some of the big, seismic trends that have led to a massive shortage of talent in today’s workforce. We ask whether these trends won’t persist -- or become more pronounced, even, over the long term. And then we explore what that would mean for us as leaders, given the need to attract and retain such scarce talent.
This week, in issue #58 of TalentStories, “Lessons from leaders on using quiet as a superpower”, we look at the benefits accrue -- to our employees, and to ourselves -- when we create quiet for our teams. What lift do we get from the simple act of not speaking; of listening, and creating space for those around us. And btw, if it’s that simple – why don’t we do more of it?
This week, we focus on a topic that gets overlooked too often in conversations about work: fun. All three of our TalentStories in this issue are lighthearted. But you all know that a story wouldn't be a TalentStory if we didn't also use it to question, learn, and go a level deeper together.
This week, we look at the way the leadership role itself is evolving in real-time; and how we're failing to train leaders for that shift, while we systematically shrink the quantity – and quality – of leaders by squeezing women out of leadership roles. Leaving us with a fundamental mismatch between supply and demand, at precisely the moment we need more and better and more diverse leadership.
This week, TalentStories goes full-on "LeaderStories": we zoom in on different acts of leadership at three high-profile, household-name companies. One is a win, one is a fail, and one the jury is still out on. But each is chock-full of insight we can learn from.
This week, in issue #54 of the TalentStories newsletter - “Be Like Water, My Friends: On Becoming Flexible At Work” -- we discuss why companies are suddenly bending over backwards to become more flexible. What’s the rationale? What kind of examples are we seeing? What can we learn from organizations that have already made a concerted effort to stretch themselves?
This week in issue #53 of the TalentStories Newsletter, "Shrinking Supply, Shifting Demand," we discuss why interest rate cuts meant to stifle the hot job market aren't working, why the culprit is a systematically shrinking supply of labor, and most importantly: what does this mean for organizations and leaders keen to grow and thrive in this new, labor-constrained normal?
This week, in issue #52, we deep dive on Gen Z: we learn some fun facts about the group, but also look at what makes them tick at work, how their values manifest there -- and what that means for everyone, given a workforce now comprised of five distinct generations for the first time in history.
This week, in issue #51, we turn our TalentStories gaze toward mass layoffs in the tech sector. This, after big cuts at Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The point we’re here to make, though, isn’t just about the human toll these layoffs take on individuals and teams, but also the leadership failures that underlie them. What mistakes were made, and what can we learn from them?
In our three Stories this week, we ask what it looks like to tack the other way at work. We guide our questions to a constant theme of these issues: how do we respond to dizzying change?
Our stories this week are about power, because, well, work is all about power: the ever-present dynamics between employees, managers, teams and organizations.
Aki and Usman discuss their respective top talent stories of the year. The topics range from the drastic drop in employee wellbeing in 2022 to the ever-changing role of managers in the workplace. Tune in to find out what the top stories are!
In this inaugural episode of the TalentStories Podcast, Aki and I discuss issue number #46 of our newsletter. The primary topic is uncertainty and we view it from the three very different lenses.