Rethinking Flexibility at Work

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

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Flexibility” is the number one request people are making from employers. But flexibility is much more than WHERE you work–it also means having the freedom to make choices about what you work on, who you work with, and when and how often you work. This episode examines the science and practice of creating more autonomy– and making it work for people and organizations. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/WL43

We have a quick favor to ask you! We love making the show, and we're always trying to make it better. So if you have a few minutes, please take our survey at surveynerds.com/worklife

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We wanted to create a workplace where even Mondays don't suck.
0:04.7	This is Ville Houttou.
0:08.0	He's the CEO of Vincent, a Finnish software company.
0:11.7	Four years ago, one of our software engineers sent me a culinary invite to his annual
0:17.5	salary review with the subject Promote John to CEO.
0:23.8	And I thought, why not?
0:26.0	It's the worst thing that could happen and I made him a CEO for a day with one task.
0:31.4	He told that engineer he could make one decision that would improve the workplace for everyone.
0:37.7	And he will have unlimited budget to do so.
0:41.6	He thought I was choking.
0:43.5	But when he realized I'm not, he discussed with a lot of employees, little a lot of
0:48.4	research and analysis when he came time to announce his decision.
0:54.3	He looked me in the eyes and told me we will be ordering beanbag chairs to the lounge.
1:01.3	And I happened to hate beanbag chairs.
1:04.7	Wow.
1:05.7	Was his goal really to make life better for everyone or to make life just a little bit worse
1:09.9	for you?
1:12.5	I trusted him to make a big decision and he trusted me back not to charge his decision.
1:22.1	And that's how it got started and we called it CEO of the day.
1:26.9	And we've been running it four years now.
1:30.4	They do really think about what benefits us all as a group.
1:39.7	What's been implemented since then?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.