Simon Waller (00:01)
Welcome to episode two of the Future with Friends, the podcast where we explore the future of whatever it is that my guest wants to talk about. And my guest today is a very dear friend, Dr. Adrian Medhurst. Adrian, welcome to the show.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (00:16)
Thanks Simon, it’s so good to be able to be part of this honestly, looking forward to it.

Simon Waller (00:22)
So Adrian, I mean, you’re one of my oldest friends in Melbourne. I think we probably met within probably about, I reckon, maybe a month of me arriving here, which was in somewhere around the middle of 2010. And I think we actually got introduced through, I actually think it have been your old boss, Amantha who had done some content that she was sharing at a group called the Creative Performance Exchange. I met some amazing people through CPX.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (00:43)
Yeah

Simon Waller (00:50)
And she was there in some content around resilience. And when I spoke to her afterwards, she actually said, this is not my content is Adrian’s content, we should put you guys in touch. Do remember that when we first met do all those years ago?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (01:04)
I knew,

I do, absolutely. I remember that it was about resilience content and that being a topic that I’ve spent a lot of time on given my doctoral thesis explored it. And I was just stoked that you wanted to nerd out on it to be honest. I’d forgotten exactly where the connection came from, but it didn’t matter because as soon as we got together, away we went.

Simon Waller (01:28)
Yeah, I we kind

of penciled in like, you know, like a half an hour get to know each other telephone conversation that went for like three hours. And that is a small drop in the ocean of nerdy out that we have done since then. I probably do more now with you than anyone else I know.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (01:44)
The same, obviously. And so that’s where we’ll keep ourselves in check today, won’t we? We’ll take our meanderings where they need to and otherwise recognise that as much as it’s serving us, let’s also get to the important points.

Simon Waller (01:46)
Hahaha

Yeah,

so do think like this structure around kind of scenarios is a great way of kind of focusing people’s nerdy now. Like it’s like, how do we kind of gather information on the future and bring it together into a coherent story that other people can engage with, because we do know that, you know, human beings are both storytelling and storing listening machines. So we kind of tap it into something that’s quite, like primal and primitive around the way that we learn with each other. So it’s kind of taking all that nerdy stuff, put it into a story.

and then using that story as a way of learning about what might happen and shaping the behaviors that we’re going to undertake in the present. So we’re in the right place, I believe.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (02:39)
I do too and it was an interesting exercise

right because when we can nerd out we can go in all sorts of directions and when because we’re mates we can we can kind of leave it there if we want to you know sometimes things are unresolved and that’s okay but I think even this is an exercise it was interesting to say let’s put it down and let’s let’s kind of have it there in front of us and say what do we choose to believe

What feels comfortable and uncomfortable is quite an interesting experience really.

Simon Waller (03:10)
Yeah,

so we’re jump into that a little bit more later on the podcast. But before we get to that, we’re going to get you to share your scenario. But before we get to that, we do have to give people a little bit of insight into the topic that you have chosen today. So share with us your chosen future to explore.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (03:29)
future of work-life balance.

Simon Waller (03:32)
So the first, yes, the future of work life balance. Now, I know from our nerd out conversations that your view of work life balance may not be in how it’s traditionally portrayed, which is idea of a set of scales. And on one side of the scales, you have your work and then the other side of your scales, you have your life. And it’s about trying to find those two things to balance that it’s probably more nuanced than that. But but obviously work life balance is the worldly like the widely accepted terminology.

when we talk about this challenge of how do we actually take these important parts of our lives and bring them together into a whole? Do you want to share a little bit maybe about kind of what was front of mind for you? Why choose this topic of all topics?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (04:14)
Yeah, well, you’re absolutely right that we know the term work-life balance and I think lots of people would probably nod in agreement that most see it as an ideal that hasn’t been realised for themselves. And I think some of that perhaps comes from the reality that it’s not balance, balanced.

it’s balancing, you know, we’re always kind of balancing with the ebbs and flows of the circumstances that shift in our work and life, either because certain things happen in our environment, there are changes afoot, or because we choose to follow opportunities and make some adjustments ourselves. And all of that is totally natural and okay. I instead think that a term, work-life agility, and I use this a lot,

puts us back in the driver’s seat to recognise that it is about our agency in being very clear and intentional about what balance can look like based on how things shift, shifting to influence us or us choosing to make some changes. And so that’s why I thought it was interesting to go work-life balance. Well, I think, and I explore something that I believe is

more helpful, but if we forecast into the future, what does this look like for us as work and life changes, as technology influences that and so on.

Simon Waller (05:51)
The other thing about is when we first when we first chatted about it, and we’ll talk about the topic, there was another aspect of this, which I thought was also really interesting in terms of that motivation around around this particular topic, which is that we both are kind of consultancy types. So we’ve given up on the kind of the corporate gig, we’ve gone out on our own. And I think some of the rationale behind that is often driven by a belief in kind of that work life balance idea. And yet,

Paradoxically, when you first do it, you end up with way, way, way more time at work and probably less time with life. And you kind of are constantly pursuing this ideal that you set out to achieve. Has that also been part of the question for you in this?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (06:39)
Look, absolutely, but let’s face it, Simon, I don’t want to one up you on this, but you’re absolutely right in what you said. And then what I do for my work is on this very topic. So, you know, I am living and experiencing and researching what this looks like. And I’ve been sort of very interested in it for a long time. But as a co-founder and director of Benny Button, we actually take this whole person view.

of work and life and looking at how our wellbeing and performance are interdependent across both of those domains, work and life. And so, yeah, I am trying to do my best as a researcher and thought leader and trainer, consultant, all of those roles to take what I’ve learned and to share that with others whilst also acknowledging that

in my own small business, where I’ve got the work-life dynamics of running a small business and having two young kids and a beautiful wife and wanting to have a rich and full and meaningful life overall, yeah, it’s not lost on me that there’s some irony in the challenges that I too have with this very subject.

Simon Waller (07:59)
Well,

I think that with this preamble, think the audience now is suitably forewarned about the level of nerding out that could happen in the conversation, how meta things could get from here. But let’s now switch into your scenario. What was the timeframe, by the way, you chose to work with on this scenario? I did say least five years into the future, what have you said has been the date? When is this set? A decade. So we’re talking about the future of work-life balance in 2035.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (08:22)
Yeah, a decade out, so 10 years, yes.

Simon Waller (08:29)
Now I’m throw it over to you, Adrian, lead us through your scenario.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (08:34)
won’t quite have the same voice tones as the amazing voice of Simon Waller but let’s see how I go. So the future of work-life balance. Monday morning my room fills with soft sunrise mimicking light as my biometric schedule optimizer gently nudges me awake. I don’t feel like I’ve had the best sleep and I squint at the balance index score that’s flashing on my ceiling.

scores of 67. That’s not great. The AI assistant chimes in suggesting a lighter workload and an afternoon recovery block to recalibrate my energy levels. I sigh. Last week I ignored the work-life algorithm’s prompts to take restorative breaks and now my balance compliance rating is dipping below standards. If it drops too low I might risk being flagged as a high strain worker.

meaning that some mandatory intervention sessions with a corporate wellbeing advisor might be on my schedule. It’s not that I mind the AI’s nudges, it’s better than burning out, but I do wonder if I’m managing my work-life balance or if it’s managing me. So my workday starts in a mixed reality workspace where my avatar meets colleagues from three different continents. We each wear neural interface rings, like this.

Neural interface rings that monitor our cognitive load, automatically scheduling micro breaks when our focus wanes. The system logs optimal engagement metrics in real time, ensuring we stay productive without over-exerting ourselves. It’s eerily efficient. At lunch, my well-being compliance dashboard suggests I meet a colleague in a corporate-sponsored biopark, a green space designed to increase social interaction and…

reduce the stress response. The software tracks our conversation time and mood shifts and if I’m flagged as too socially withdrawn I’ll get a little nudge to book a well-being enhancing interaction. Basically a recommended coffee catch-up. As the day winds down I receive a balanced forecast report. A predictive model analyzes my upcoming workload, sleep cycles and emotional data to preemptively adjust my schedule.

Tomorrow, it’s recommending a four-hour deep work sprint followed by a mental detox session. I glance at the settings, tempted to override the AI and work late instead, but a warning flashes, override detected. Continued manual interventions may impact your performance classification. So I hesitate. I used to think of work-life balance meant that I could have control over my time, and now I wonder if…

It’s balance or just another metric to optimize. So I pause and I make my choice and just like that, just like my balance score, my autonomy starts slipping through my fingers.

Simon Waller (11:41)
Excellent. I think you read that beautifully. By the way, I don’t think that you should be using me necessarily as your to assess yourself against that was beautifully articulated, Adrian, thank you for that. Let’s talk a little bit about the process of creating this. So this is interesting, because you’re the first guest on the show, who isn’t a futurist by trade doesn’t have a background in creating these types of scenarios.

Talk us through, mean, I gave you a little some prompts and some ways you could use say generative AI to help with this. But maybe you could talk us through what was the process that you went through from here’s this idea that I want to explore through to kind of having something like this, like as a finished scenario.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (12:25)
Yes, so, and I could even say that I was so excited about what it is that you’re doing with this podcast that initially I was trying to figure out what’s the best topic to choose, you know? And then I realised that it matters, but actually any topic that I connect with,

is incredibly fruitful for what was possible with this activity. So landed on work-life balance, even choosing to put it in a term that’s currently used now instead of even trying to be more future orientated based on how I’m trying to encourage progress from the outdated ideal of work-life balance into this work-life agility space. But

picking that and then knowing that I have certain point of view, feelings, some of it research, some of it just my own experience. And then I did use the Generative AI prompts as a way to kind of use it as a sounding board. And to be honest, that’s what I tend to quite enjoy about using Generative AI rather than assuming that it’s going to give me

the answer or the answer that I just take from first prompt I like to use it as a sounding board and to actually see through iterations where I what the sort of back and forth is what feels more right or less right and as a result you’ve got this

agent that if I’m critical of where it went I can kind of put it down a different track and that’s totally okay. So that sort of creative process, not saying the AI is creative necessarily, but the packaging and yeah, yeah, so that’s how it felt and I’ll hit the pause button there. it was yeah.

Simon Waller (14:38)
There’s a tool in your process.

Yeah, can I ask like when

I think that’s interesting and I’ve kind of use, I’ve got a kind of a love hate relationship with it. I use it in a similar way that you do. kind of still have some deep questions around the ethics and the legality of it. And so I’m kind of really important that I don’t over invest in it. I don’t see it as being the solution to things. I feel it’s an interesting technology for us to play around, especially as a sounding board and having undertaken similar exercises. You sometimes

it throws up some interesting propositions that you may not have considered yourself. When you kind of went through this process, was there a couple of things that are in that last final scenario that you’re like, that really struck a chord with me when it was first proposed or when it first came across to your radar.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (15:28)
Yeah, well, it’s actually a really interesting process, Because one of the things that I was conscious of was that I wanted this to be interesting for me, but I also wanted it to be something that we could dive into that, based on our conversation, would then be interesting for others. And so something I was conscious of was to not have the scenario, paint a picture of a life that would be too difficult for someone to see themselves in.

So you’ll acknowledge that it sort of gets into more of the work dynamics side of it and having my sort of balance in check through this technology. And I was really interested in where technology was going in this space given my work is around what sorts of technologies might really

support and enable people to be able to work on this sort of challenge in a way that is affordable, scalable, etc. when I’m not there, you know? And so that was on my mind as well. And I think what was most interesting if I sort of finalized this little trio of insights was that I had a little bit of discomfort with what came back.

Simon Waller (16:38)
Yeah.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (16:54)
and I actually felt that that was really good because what it prompted me to think about was well what is the technology going to do that’s going to be really helpful, supportive for the person and whilst that’s really important I also wanted technology to be empowering and I’m not sure that I got that empowering

picture back from the scenario. Instead I got more of a, the technology is there to predict and fix and act in support but not necessarily to amplify my own humanity and enable me to feel like I was making better choices about my work-life balance. Does that make sense?

Simon Waller (17:46)
Yeah, and we’ll jump in a little bit more

into the content. I just want to close out this little piece around the structure of it. And I think there’s a really interesting, a couple of really interesting lessons is that when we do scenarios, we can do broad scenarios that touch on a lot of topics, but they don’t give us any answers because they lack the granularity required to actually really give us insight, specific insights. So I think kind of what you’ve gone through is yes, you’ve got a broad topic, which is work-life balance. But if you actually think about the content of that scenario, it’s fairly narrow.

A lot of it is around that, as you said, that use of technology in the space of work life balance and also obviously touched on the work you do with Benny Button around kind of performance and well-being. So I think that’s really nice that you kind of naturally came to the conclusion for this to be useful for us. It also has to be relatively narrow. I want to talk a little bit about some of those choices. Like for me, this is very interesting in the fact that it is so

dominated by the work side of things. It’s all seen through the lens of the work side. And probably the term in it that is most jarring for me is this idea of work-life optimisation. There’s no longer even about balance. It’s actually about optimising. And this feels like almost like the concept of work-life balance being co-opted.

by a tech company or by a big employer to kind of go cool, right? So we now are seeing life as purely a way of optimising how you turn up at work. Tell us a little bit about that because I think that must be an interesting kind of area to explore for you and your work as well.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (19:28)
absolutely and I do think that that sort of sense or signal of things came through in the scenario and that was one of those moments where I’m like, okay, in the way that technology is working here, doesn’t feel immediately, I don’t feel immediately comfortable with it and I do think that it sort of painted the future along this path of you’re being taken care of.

by the technology and it is in the service of optimising efficiency or productivity. Yes, there were those nudges around, we don’t want you to burn out and so on. And I do think that they are really important mechanisms as well. But optimisation is kind of the idea. And what that means is it’s not letting anything swing too far out of kilter because there are potential risks with that. And so on the one hand, you could say, yeah, well, workplaces.

would benefit from maintaining a level of sustainability and efficiency and productivity. They also would benefit from not having people going into risky territory in terms of overload or burnout risk or mental health disturbance and so on. So you can nod and say, they all make sense. But the question mark for me is what are the choices around these?

potential imbalances or risks and how is the person, the actor, encouraged to really feel clear on the choices that they make rather than just feeling like there’s going to be a little wrap over the knuckles for it. Because I do think that some of the most important learning that we have

is in being outside of our comfort zone, is in noticing when things don’t quite feel right. And in fact, from that, being able to then course correct and learn from that and improve on that for ourselves into the future. And if technology can support that, I think that’s really powerful. Rather than solving all of it for us ahead of time, can it kind of guide us along the way? like a Sherpa doesn’t climb the mountain for us, it can kind of see some directions and it’s got some tools

to help you on your adventure. And I think that’s the kind of metaphor that I like to connect with and how technology might serve in that way. So that’s some meandering.

Simon Waller (21:53)
Okay. Yeah, there’s a couple of things I would like to pick up on that.

So there’s a couple of things that come up for me. So first of all, and I think this is probably, you know, relates to conversations that we’ve had around your own work. So you’re deeply interested in well being, you have been a yoga instructor, you’ve done meditation, you’ve been a high performance athlete, you’ve done all this stuff, right. But I do believe that in that equation around well being and performance is probably well being, that is more important to you than performance. Is that a fair enough thing to say?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (22:23)
Well, it is because, well, it’s because of a huge life-changing event. And so this very much links to where we just were. When I was a professional athlete, it was all about pushing to perform, even if you were running the risk of injury. And that absolutely happened on a number of occasions. And I was a slow learner, you might say as well. And so…

What I realised through some learning and some training and some practices, not only from a recovery point of view, but to make higher performance more sustainable, less subject to risk from injury, from my mental as well as my physical health, there were wellbeing practices that were fundamental to that. And I realised…

things that I might otherwise say that’s not going to give me the performance edge. I realised it was fundamental that I invested in those practices and sustained certain routines, not only to reduce the risk of injury, but to enable performance that I had otherwise not been able to reach. So I think it is this whole spectrum idea. It’s not just risk and hazard sort of

Simon Waller (23:41)
Yeah, so, but in this

Dr Adrian Medhurst (23:47)
support it’s also enabling and maybe that’s the thing I’m wrestling with here I want it to be both have your back and enable you to realize what’s possible.

Simon Waller (23:59)
Yeah, and I think the challenge though is and I think I know like part of what you do at the moment is like saying, hey, if we invest in people’s well being, the dividend we get is performance. And so therefore, as an organisation, you should be generally interested in investing in people’s well being because of the dividend called performance that you get. But then as soon as you kind of then go and therefore, company, we want you to buy this app and give it to your people to help them with their well being so that you get performance.

As soon as we kind of, you know, kind of brought that commercial lens to it, you kind of then go, but who’s now making the decisions about my well-being and under what circumstances are they doing it? And what are the chances for that whole process to be co-opted? It sounds very good in principle, but you kind of go like how many times, you know, it’s like follow the money, who benefits from this whole system being co-opted? It’s like, well, the company benefits.

What would it be like, for instance, like in that wellbeing and performance space whereby I would maybe tell you in the short term that you’re doing great and that you should definitely be putting a little bit extra in at work. Even though I know in the back end, it’s showing that you’re starting to burn out, but we’ve got these deliverables. I’ve got to get out this next couple of weeks. We can give you a bit of a rest afterwards and we’re actually co-opting the system to deliver against corporate objectives as opposed.

to personal ones. And in this case, it’s like, how much of someone’s life are we willing to sacrifice so that we can get more out of the work piece? I think that kind of comes through in this as being almost like this underlying tension that we may have to deal with. People aren’t willing to pay for these apps themselves. If we do, we get a freemium model where our data gets sold on to through some data broker to in the dark web and all the rest of it. But if we’re not willing to pay for it, who’s going to pay for it?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (25:52)
Yeah, and it is a really interesting one, right Simon? Because if there is that idea of the formula is we invest in well-being and we get this performance dividend, then it could signal a problem in terms of the motivation sitting behind it. Is this really in the best interest of the individual or is this a performance driving intervention?

So that’s a question mark and how it is legitimately linked to an organisation’s vision, purpose, mission, values, et cetera, how it’s positioned with people, whether it feels really genuine that the organisation, leaders and team respect this in support of both well-being and performance and work and life a person having a balanced or rich life overall.

But let’s also remember that some of the points in the scenario kind of signal what can happen when people overwork themselves, when they are motivated to achieve meaningful outcomes at work. Maybe they’ve got some really great strength alignment and they’ve got some big challenging projects that they’re working on. And it’s so exciting that in the future we can now really invest ourselves in work that we find fulfilling.

people have tendencies to overexert themselves, to overindex, to push, achieve, to perhaps progress in their career. And so even in this scenario, what’s the driving force here? It’s an interesting one. It calls that into question a little bit.

Simon Waller (27:39)
Yeah, I do think that’s interesting.

So I pick up in that is also we have these apps. And and it’s giving us you know, it takes a bunch of bunch of different measures, and rolls them up into a score. And we use that score to assess our progress or how we’re going. And, you know, as you said, like there is this kind of really challenging conversation around understanding what what work life balance really means.

I loved earlier on you talked about the concept of balance, balancing is a far more realistic way of looking at it than balance that it’s not a static system is constantly in motion. You’ve obviously introduced the concept of work life agility. And in different fields, there’s other takes on this as well work life integration and all the rest of it. But as a simple sense, you’d sign a code like there are intrinsic internal motivators that you would go

Yes, this is my work, but I’m so deeply connected with it. It doesn’t feel like just work. It feels like my life’s work or something instead. How would an app like this measure such concepts and probably can’t. And so instead of measuring what really matters, it just measures something else like heart rate or like what are the things in the physical environment that it can draw on to generate a number.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (28:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Waller (28:56)
Yet often we don’t kind of look at the intricacies of how that number is generated. And we start to put maybe more faith in it than it really deserves. I think that was something I picked up in this is we’re almost asking people to outsource their own intuition about how they’re going in life and this sense of balance that they’ve got. And rather than kind of be deeply reflective and go, how am I doing? What does that look like for me right now? We’re just going to ask the app.

It said 67, you’re doing 67 at the moment. And it’s like, how much trust should we put in it? What level of agency are we really experiencing when we use apps in this way?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (29:37)
that’s a really interesting one and it’s one where there is some existing research that sort of surfaces this conundrum and I also wonder whether the future is actually going to help us to sort of put together

our own formula help us to actually think through what the formula would look like and what metrics will support that. But I’ll give you one example. There was a study that looked at sleep and it used sensor technology. People that were sleeping were measured in terms of the physiological side of the

their rest, how restorative their sleep was, but to manipulate things they were asked how well they felt they slept and then they were told what the quality of their sleep was and it was actually either pretending that it was two hours better than it physiologically was or pretending that it was two hours worse and if people were believing the scores instead of believing how they felt

about their rest, that was actually predicting what impacts that would have throughout their day. So I do think there’s legitimate cause for questioning what sorts of metrics are we capturing and what are the sorts of things that we are telling people and are we telling them believe this or are we encouraging them to take it as a data point but to consider

What this means and how they’re feeling and how they’re to take that information? How is it empowering them to make choices instead of saying? This is you Follow the logic you know what I mean. It’s a really interesting one and Yeah, I’ll hit the pause button there because you might have something to explore

Simon Waller (31:26)
Yeah.

It made

me like you used I thought was a lovely analogy about that. You the app is like the Sherpa that helps you climb Everest. It doesn’t climb it for you. It helps you do it. And I want to go that’s really lovely. I love the premise of that it’s there to assist you. That being said, most people also shouldn’t be climbing Everest. You know, like it’s almost where was the bit where you just walked up a hill? Yeah, where was the bit where you kind of just you hiked in? I don’t know outside of Queenstown.

like where’s the steps, the baby steps to get before you try Everest. So I just try to extend that analogy and I was like, there is probably some stuff here like there’s almost a more rudimentary, like learning around work life balance that we need to kind of instill within people before we ask them to climb Everest. If I was to extend that analogy for you like that, given your expertise in in well being and performance, what what would this app ideally do?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (32:08)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (32:33)
what would be those stages it might teach us before it says you’re ready for Everest.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (32:40)
Yeah, well what’s interesting, I think it would need to capture certain data points over a period of time to understand an individual and their sort of typical ranges of things. Because that’s important, certainly with some physiological markers, just getting one point of data at one time and expecting that that’s going to be

representative of that individual most of the time. Well that’s not necessarily the case, right? So firstly I think it would need to get a good understanding of the person over time and then I think you’re right the baby steps would be well what are the little nudges and little shifts that we can encourage

and see what impacts they have. Much like science doesn’t want to throw too many manipulations into the mix at one point in time because it then won’t understand, well, we don’t really know with everything that we threw at it, we don’t really know what had the impact. And what’s interesting is that

we might need a few different things in our formula, might need a few different metrics, might need a few different types of nudges in order for that to be the right mix, for that to be the right system for us. But how do we get there? How do we understand the individual broadly? How do we help the individual to gauge what the right metrics are and what their formula of what good looks like is to them versus

expecting that we figure it out in the labs and then we impose it on everyone.

Simon Waller (34:27)
Now this made me think whether this scenario made me think about was to my my corporate experience was, was at Rio Tinto back in 2010 to 15 years ago. And I some things have changed, probably some things haven’t changed. One thing that really struck me was that when I was there, having meaningful conversations around sustainability was really difficult, because people were inherently aware that digging holes in the ground is not so sustainable. And I’ve always thought that’s okay. There’s also the way that we operate.

you in the way that we operate, we can talk about being more sustainable. And effectively, that’s also often associated with resource reduction, which then associated with cost savings, and should be a conversation that we’re willing to have a lot of people weren’t willing to have that conversation, because they’re inherently aware of the other problem, right? I kind of think and I don’t know how this plays out, you know, in the work you do with Benny Button, but I imagine that some organisations aren’t too keen to talk about well being because they’re inherently aware that the nature of their

workplace is one that well being isn’t necessarily front and foremost, and maybe therefore we don’t want to be we don’t talk about too much. We don’t bring this to people’s attention. I kind of imagine in this scenario, there’s also possibly some workplaces with a very shy away from investing in an app that talks about work-life balance, because we seriously need people working 60 to 70 hours a week here. like, what do you see like that in like what what maybe is some of the the unintended consequences or the way that this

Dr Adrian Medhurst (35:45)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (35:53)
this app or this future plays out where people may be a little bit surprised by what happens in it.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (35:58)
Well, and you’re right that it might be a challenge in the future. It’s certainly a challenge now, and it’s not necessarily the case that an organisation really knows what sorts of impacts are happening downstream in terms of people’s experiences following certain work practices. However, that is…

changing right now we’ve got new legislation that’s coming through and it’s really encouraging, well it’s requiring that organisations and their leaders are much more tuned into psychosocial hazards and risks and getting a sense of what the impact is of work design, the work environment, the ways in which people work and also how they interact with one another for the potential impacts

as it relates to elevating stress levels and the degree to which it might cause psychological harm, not just the physical health and safety that we are more aware of historically. So change is happening now and I think it is an interesting time for organisations to wonder, well, with how work is designed at the moment and with the people that we have and how they work and how they’re led and how they interact with one another.

What does the question look like? Are we nervous about it? But what it brings up for me as well is the legislation is there, it’s helping us to understand what are the potential challenges or risks? What is the prevalence? And how might we need to understand that and then work to rectify that? What I’m hoping we continue to do and do more is to look at this full spectrum and ask, well, what does

good look like? What does work design look like that really enables the individual to be at their best, to thrive, both the well-being and performance and the work-life balance? How do we design work like that? How do we lead individuals and how do we set up teams so that they’re interacting in ways that are really powerful at driving and supporting that and how can we make sure that it is sustainable from work, whole of person perspective? think

And that’s what I get excited about here, right? How can it not just be on that risk and hazard side and be on that what does good look like here as well?

Simon Waller (38:20)
I mean,

that’s, that’s interesting. And I find again, this is my opinion, slightly dystopian, I feel like that’s overly optimistic, Adrian, I think that what happens is, like, we often don’t see the system as being the problem. Like, quite rightly, we look at it from the outside. And as outside people got gosh, the way you design that system doesn’t really work very well. But for the people inside the system, it’s like a fish in water, it’s just what we’re in, right?

I think there is often a tendency when the system is broken to blame the individuals in it for as being incompetent or problematic or, you know, rather than then actually be able to acknowledge the system that exists. I do some work with local government. There’s a lot of work at the moment as some new legislation has come out around. Council is needing to sign a code of conduct about how they’re going to behave.

nothing’s been done about the root cause of the bad behavior, which is the frustration that counselors often experience inside the system that they’re operating in. And the struggles to try and get things done, managing a diverse set of different stakeholders and viewpoints across a spectrum of diverse people, right? Like nothing’s been done to help train them up and support them in doing decision making better. Instead, it’s like the opposite. It’s like, we will hold you personally accountable for the problems of the system. And I see that almost in this a little bit. It would have been like, if I was in a company, an organisation,

Either like I need to redesign all of work, which that sounds like really hard. Or I get this app, right. And now I can point out when people are struggling. But it almost makes the problem the person’s problem, as opposed to our collective problem. I think that’s an interesting potential outcome of this.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (40:03)
Yeah, look, it is. I get what you’re saying and what I’m hopeful of and what I also believe is that it is a two-way street. You don’t absolve the individual of some responsibility, some accountability. But it is the case that it can sometimes feel like the employee is given the…

resilience training teaspoon of cement as a kind of well, we’re to give you skills so that you can handle this better as just to leave it at that. And that I think has historically been received poorly because it is sending the message that managing the stresses of work is the person’s responsibility. Let’s give them the skills to do that rather than thinking upstream. Why is the work for some

Simon Waller (40:38)
Mmm.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (40:55)
creating that level of stress and if it’s an unfair and unreasonable amount of stress then what’s our responsibility to adjust the way work is designed and it’s tricky right because different one person’s stress might be another person’s motivating challenge and so this does get tricky there’s an area and I’m actually heading over to Europe to speak on this tomorrow but an area called work called job

crafting and I like to broaden it out to be the way in which we can craft our work and our life. But this is going to start to help us to see that there’s the design of work and there’s also how an individual can feel and function and there are methodologies for being in the middle of this top-down bottom-up sort of two-way street. I’m mixing metaphors now but

to support the shaping and crafting of these little experiments. Yes, we’ve designed work, top down. We’ve sort of put it upon an individual. And if it doesn’t quite fit, because we noticed that there are things deviating and having an impact on the individual, rather than just saying, well, you need to solve this now so that you can fit the work.

is there some sense of, how is the individual feeling and functioning? What is going to get the best out of them? And what in the middle might be some alterations and some experiments to see, you know, with the metrics and with the levers that we can pull, what sorts of experiments might take us in some helpful directions? Yeah.

Simon Waller (42:37)
Hmm.

So this is obviously, this is not a prediction for the future. It’s, it’s one of many possible futures that we could ultimately see, like, come to be right. And I kind of talk about these ideas, scenarios, and none of them are true, but they all contain elements of the truth. Because they’re based on a series of, of signals or drivers that were seen around us at the moment. And we’re asking about what might happen if they play out in particular ways.

And I see with this in this conversation, there’s a really interesting kind of explorations to be had. But as said, it’s just one of many possible futures that we could have. And I think in what you’re touching on, there is almost a slightly different one. You’re actually talking about this idea of job crafting as being a much more, it’s almost like seems like it’s slightly less reliant on technology and an algorithm to determine what is good for us, but more kind of an active participation between individuals and

and perhaps leaders or bosses within the workplace to say, how do we do this collectively together? Talk us a bit more like, you know, when we talk about this idea of job crafting becoming a future, versus just your scenario you shared has been a future, what like, what would be the shifts or the signals that would indicate we’re going down one path or the other do you think?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (43:56)
Yeah, well, and it’s interesting. And I’m glad that you got a sense of that human-centered and collaborative nature of job crafting. And it’s certainly the case that as a methodology, it can really…

support people and leaders to generate some ideas and some plans and to see how that works for them from an implementation or application perspective. That being said, right now I’m building some technology to try and support that. No, genuinely. There’s a theory that helps us understand these competing forces and there’s some very academic measurement that looks at levels of balance and the flow through impact.

from work design and the individual and how they function in teams, cetera. Are they engaged? they experiencing stress and strain? What does the well-being performance outcomes look like? Well, with this model, we can actually look at some different indicators and…

I’ve developed an instrument to support an individual to actually look at those key variables and get a bit of a read and a gauge for themselves so that it can signal back, here might be where certain things are mismatched or out of balance and for that to support, I guess to empower, well what sort of crafting efforts might be valuable here. So to support that process not necessarily

to answer all of it for the individual, but to make some recommendations if they’re getting out of balance and not noticing before they check in and track those competing forces and the influence they’re having.

Simon Waller (45:39)
Hmm. Yeah, I this is such an interesting tension. I know it’s something that we’ve talked about in the past in terms of Benny Button. That I think when you have obviously a you mean like Benny Button has two aspects to it, there’s a lot of work that you’re involved in in terms around kind of the consulting side of performance and well being. A lot of that’s around kind of leadership engagement and kind of workshops. And then you’ve got a tech platform that you have been creating, which is there as a as a form of support. But when we invest in tech,

we have this perception of how well do we get to scale? And how do we get it to to do the work that we would normally have done as human beings? It’s almost like the value well, there’s almost like two ways of creating value, I suppose one way is we can create value by eliminating workers. So there was a person who did this job, attract all this stuff, we don’t have to pay that person anymore, because we now have this app, right? Another version of value creation is by using this

we can actually create more value in the whole system. That if we use that information well, we can use it to support decision making and that decision maker makes us a better organisation, right? I think you obviously deeply believe in the second version of that rather than the first version. Is that fair enough to say?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (46:50)
Look, absolutely. it’s because I’m concerned that we’ve been down a path that has perhaps been a bit blanket and it’s not acknowledged that well-being ingredient in that sort of well-being and performance dynamic. And that’s also not necessarily really put the work and life made that visible both for the individual but also for the organisation.

the workplace has tended to just say, I’m going to stay in my lane, the individual’s life is none of my business. And whilst to a certain extent, that’s kind of true. What’s the opportunity if the organisation in a trustworthy way can say, look,

I’m going to have an instrument that can help the individual to understand themselves more completely. Rather than having missingness in the data, I will be able to put together a package and as a result the individual can feel more informed. But if we can get some trustworthy de-identified data at the group level, we might also get an understanding of what people’s work to life dynamics look like and see what comes up as interventions and supports that we wouldn’t have otherwise

thought of or thought were an opportunity for us if we just didn’t even look at any of the variables on that side of the equation.

Simon Waller (48:13)
Yeah,

I think that’s often the case, I think, especially in large organisations. There are people whose job it is, is to provide that kind of support to people, whether it be, you know, through HR, or whether it be through professional development opportunities. And it’s like, well, we’ve already got the resources, the questions on it, can we use those resources better? Can they be a better support for people? And in some ways, I feel like with this scenario, it’s almost like it kind of touches on almost a little bit of a cautionary tale, where it’s almost feels like there’s an over reliance on

the technology being the entirety of the solution that has actually eliminated some of those roles that we would have normally have engaged to provide the final support, the human to human touch point. And then as a result of it though, you’re left with these kind of questions about at what point do I take back my own agency? At what point do I override the system? And am I willing to wear the consequences of that? Whereas it doesn’t feel like that has to be the choice.

it should be ultimately how does the system encourage agency? How does it support you regardless of what decision you make? And I think that’s a very different premise than then kind of what I think we often see is these AI systems. I think one of the ones that I saw recently, which really struck me, there was a piece of software was used to kind of assess plagiarism and AI generated writing amongst schoolchildren.

And it proposed that in laboratory testing, it had like 95 % accuracy. It’s like you kind of reach this point whereby though that that even if you’re an experienced teacher, if you’re an inexperienced teacher, and you’re like, well, I’d be 90, would I be 95 % accurate in terms of assessing plagiarism and AI generate? I probably wouldn’t be so I’ll now forgo all of my agency and give it to the tech to tell me, even though 5 % of the time it will be wrong. I’m willing to wear that 5 % because otherwise I couldn’t do better than myself.

What was ultimately found though in real world testing was only near that level of efficacy. And also what we know about these systems, it also has these inherent biases in it. So if you had English as an additional language, the chance of it being detected as being plagiarized or AI generated was more than double or triple that of someone who has English as a first language. And so I think that sometimes with these systems, we put more faith in than we should. I love the idea that out of this system is like, well, what would we do to enhance the human interaction and take

And I said, yeah, maximise agency, you know.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (50:40)
Yeah, and look, that’s my hope and I think that’s what came through in looking at this future and saying, yes, but, know, this is a possibility and there are other possibilities as you pointed out and I think that’s something that I felt quite motivated by, I guess. It’s like, okay, well, I wanna make sure that I’m pursuing what will ultimately help

the individual to navigate and get insights from challenges and to feel that they can make wise choices and they can learn from those choices rather than being controlled by the system as such. So, yeah, that’s, and I don’t know if we’re getting to a point where we’re kind of rounding out, but there were some, yeah, some really

valuable, I guess, almost feeling like it was fuel in my crusade. If this is where the future could head, then how can I make sure that I’m working my butt off?

to enable people to be at their best. mean, live well, have impacts on the t-shirt, mate. We want to encourage people and the mission of the business is really an extension of something that I believe in so much. How do you really help people to live well and have the best impact that they can? And that’s fulfillment in their work and life experience. Anyway, I’m sort of…

rambling on now, but I think it’s because I’m like, it’s almost like a Jerry Maguire thing. I’m like, right, this is the future I want to create now. Who’s coming with me?

Simon Waller (52:25)
No, no, that’s okay. As I said, I think…

that’s beautiful.

And the reason why we undertake these exercises, apart from going on to a podcast called The Future With Friends have been forced to do it by the host. The other reason you might do it is, is exactly for the reasons that you’re talking about. It allows us to explore in a little more depth, some of the content that we come across on a on a regular basis. So all around you in your job, you will be coming across these signals of change signals to indicate how the future might be different from today.

And this is a process of asking you to take all those things and mold them into into a story. But the story being set 10 years in the future is that this is a process of, of exploration and contemplation with the objective that it might help us reshape or rethink what we’re doing in the present. And so I suppose, in addition to that, I think also there’s a scenario that is something that you could even share with some of your own clients.

as well to say, hey, here’s a story about the future. It may not be a story that we all like, we might be a story that we all find a little bit jarring. And if that’s the case, what would we do differently now to make sure that that’s not the future that we get. So again, I think there’s a really powerful use of this in that way. And I’d love to hear if that’s something that you end up doing with it. But just to end with though, like that first part of that around the exploration and the contemplation.

And you kind of touch on a little bit there already. what do you apart from I think that sense of reassurance perhaps that you got about the direction that you’re heading in? What else did you take away or learn from this that you think might shape or change the way that you approach what you’re doing with either Benny Button or even in your own personal life?

Dr Adrian Medhurst (54:14)
Yeah, and I think I can’t help but now bring it back to me. Because you’re right, I went to configure this in a way that I had hoped would sort of have people see the story and see themselves in it and I didn’t frame it in a way that…

Simon Waller (54:22)
That’s okay.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (54:38)
people would say, well, I can’t relate to that. But I relate to it a lot and for a lot of the reasons that we have touched on, which is, you know, how is work organised? What are the controls that I need to sort of fit within? But also what are my tendencies and how do I need to keep myself in check?

you know, running a small business and the irony of running the risk of work-life imbalance and so forth. That’s a reality, right? So I think what I take from it is not only knowing what future I’m really motivated to explore, what I want to create and what I want to avoid came through quite strong, but there’s actually a…

an immediacy of that. I want to take a look at what are the things that I’m letting dictate my work and life experience and how can I ensure that I am doing, practicing what I preach, stopping and checking in and saying am I achieving, and I’m not going to say optimising, but am I achieving a level of

sort of outcome and fulfillment from the various things that I’m spending a lot of my time and energy pursuing, right? I’ve got a beautiful family. I live in a beautiful part of the world. I want to embrace and capitalise on that and be there for my life. And I also want to persevere on these important things in my work. And I want to ensure that I feel aware and empowered to notice.

any shifts that might be counterproductive on that overall work-life agility objective.

Simon Waller (56:29)
Well, I think we’ve done a fairly good job of keeping our nerd in check today. Thank you so much for spending the time on the podcast. I know we get to have these conversations in private a lot. I think it’s very cool to be able to do this in this way. And also given the scenario and the conversation, honestly, dude, best of luck for your trip to Europe. I hope job crafting becomes the way of the future, because that feels like a really compelling

a really compelling scenario for us to pursue. Thanks so much for making your time and we’ll look forward to catch up again soon. Bye.

Dr Adrian Medhurst (57:06)
Thanks Simon, cheers.