The one sentence summary

There are 30 ways to fix your work culture and fall in love with your job again.

Can’t be bothered to read it? Too much screen time lately? Listen to the 5-minute summary.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • The book is divided into three sections: recharge, sync, and buzz.
  • Recharge: performance-enhancing ways to make work less awful
    1. Have a monk mode morning: block off time and think properly.
    2. Go for a walking meeting: science shows they are more creative.
    3. Celebrate headphones: people need flexibility to work as they like.
    4. Eliminate hurry sickness: slower is better than doing it twice.
    5. Shorten your work week: they are proven to be more productive.
    6. Overthrow the mill owner who lives inside you: presenteeism doesn’t work.
    7. Turn off your notifications: they distract you.
    8. Go to lunch: if you don’t, you’ll suffer physically and mentally.
    9. Define your norms: don’t assume your work culture is inevitable.
    10. Have a digital sabbath: don’t email at weekends.
    11. Get a good night’s sleep: self-evident, this one.
    12. Focus on one thing at a time: multitasking doesn’t work.
  • Sync: fixes to make teams closer
    • Move the kettle: people mix more readily over food and drink areas.
    • Suggest a tea break: or drinks to get the whole company together.
    • Halve your meetings: either their length or their number.
    • Create a social meeting
    • Laugh: it improves everything.
    • Energise inductions: first impressions are the most important.
    • Stop (being) a bad boss: do no harm and really understand peoples’ work.
    • Know when to leave people alone: don’t meddle or micromanage.
  • Buzz: secrets of energised teams
    1. Frame work as a problem you are solving
    2. Admit when you messed up: hot debriefs (immediate) are the best.
    3. Keep teams lean: adding people to a late project makes it later.
    4. Focus on the issue, not the people
    5. Introduce a Hack Week
    6. Ban phones from meetings
    7. Champion diversity
    8. Replace presenting with reading: read briefing papers properly.
    9. Conduct a pre-mortem: ask at the beginning what will go wrong.
    10. Relax

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • Most of these ideas echo precisely what I suggested in Tick Achieve over ten years ago.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • If you read a bit, you will have seen most of these ideas before.