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Worklife with Adam Grant

How to Change Your Workplace

Worklife with Adam Grant

TED

Management, Worklife Podcast, Worklife With Adam Grant, Work Life Balance, Ted Talks, Podcast About Work Life, Ted Adam Grant, Adam Grant Podcasts, Ted Podcasts, Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Business

4.89.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s hard to make change at work happen. But wherever you sit in the hierarchy, there are steps you can take to overcome resistance and motivate people to embrace new ideas. In this episode, Adam brings in an education change agent, a business turnaround specialist, and a bestselling author to identify what you can do to improve the status quo. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/WL49

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi there, I'm Chris Duffy, host of How to Be a Better Human, another TED podcast.

0:04.0

Most of us want to be better, but we're not quite sure where to begin, and our show is here to help.

0:08.1

On our podcast, you'll hear from guests and TED speakers who might just make you a better human,

0:12.7

from standing up for what you believe in to challenging conventional wisdom, embracing rejection,

0:17.0

or finding gratitude every day, our show is your guide to becoming a little less terrible.

0:21.8

Not that you're terrible right now, I think you're great, but on something me become a little less

0:25.4

terrible and maybe you'll pick up something along the way. You can find How to Be a Better Human

0:29.6

wherever you're listening to this.

0:34.8

One day, I got a call from a hospital that was working on a major change initiative.

0:39.4

A committee of surgeons had identified a customer service problem.

0:43.5

Basically, patients weren't happy, and after eight months of work, the surgeons were getting ready

0:48.8

to roll out a big fix. They were going to train the entire staff to smile more.

0:54.9

I was a pal. When the surgeons saw that patients were dissatisfied, they immediately went and

1:04.5

studied organizations with the happiest customers, and picked Disney and the Ritz Carlton.

1:10.8

Not exactly the best fit for a hospital. There were a bunch of legitimate reasons that patients

1:15.9

were miserable, starting with poor quality of care and long wait times, and none of them had

1:21.1

anything to do with staff sparkle. The surgeons didn't just misdiagnose the problem.

1:26.8

They failed to diagnose it at all, which left the health of their patients in peril.

1:32.4

Even the smartest people in the room get stuck on change when they don't look inside their own

1:36.8

organizations for answers, which is why a change often goes wrong at work. But wherever you stand

1:43.3

in the hierarchy, there's a science of making it go right. I'm Adam Grant, and this is WorkLife,

1:54.6

my podcast with the Ted Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to

...

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