Get Reworked

In February 2020, Delta Air Lines was celebrating a record year for travel and looking forward to a 2020 that would potentially surpass even that. Thirty days later, nearly all of that business was gone.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Brandon Carson talks about the experience of living through that moment and how it's opened up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redefine work. Until recently, Brandon was head of learning at Delta, one of the world's largest airlines, and recently took on a new role as vice president of learning and leadership at Walmart. He's also the author of a new book, "L&D's Playbook in the Digital Age." It's that learning and development focus that has him feeling more hopeful, not less so, about the future.

Listen: Get Reworked Podcast Full Episode List

"We've got all these opportunities to connect to each other and learn from each other," Brandon said. "So it's an opportunity that is unlike anything we've had in the past."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• What he learned about leadership and learning through lockdown.
• How companies can reset and rebuild their leadership bench for future success.
• What exactly is different about how companies approach employee development in the digital age.
• Why a learning strategy needs to be the business strategy.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak talk with Brandon about AI, digital natives, 70-20-10 and the enduring magic of Whitney Houston. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

Corporate social responsibility gets thrown around a lot in business today. Organizations regularly tout the steps they take to make the world a better place and how they're endeavoring to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

How much of that is real? In this episode of Get Reworked, Malia Lazu breaks it down for us. She's a diversity and inclusion strategist, founder of consulting firm The Lazu Group, lecturer on innovation at MIT, and a former banker and community organizer. Suffice it to say, she sees the issue from many perspectives.

"Right now, I think a lot of what we're seeing is performative," Malia said. "And you know, that's great. Performative is a start, but it's not going to be enough to actually have an impact. We have to move from intention to impact. And once we start doing that, I think we can all take off our skepticism hat a little bit. But right now, there's no reason to."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How to know when a company is serious about making a real impact.
• Why equity is the workplace standard that companies should measure themselves against.
• Why CSR and diversity and inclusion work takes practice.
• The Three L Process (listen, learn and loving action) for how to make a difference.
• The power of employee resource groups and how to ensure women don't continue to bear the brunt of the remote work downside.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak talk about why corporate social responsibility is top of mind for businesses today. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

The shift to remote and hybrid work is just the tip of the transformation iceberg. To make the most of the massive investment in digital workplace technology over the last year-plus, we need to think much more deeply about digital transformation.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Anh Nguyen Phillips, global CEO program research director at Deloitte Consulting and co-author of "The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization through Uncertain Times," tells us why people are the linchpin in successful digital transformation.

"They have the creativity, the ingenuity, the passion," Anh said, "and all of that feeds in to creating the most impactful, innovative, life-changing kinds of technologies that we have, and that we will have going into the future. But we can't tap into that creativity and that innovation without focusing on the human element."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why we need to focus on enterprise transformation, not just digital transformation.
• Why having a higher purpose is essential to making the most of digital technology.
• How digitally mature companies approach leadership and organizational culture differently.
• The five traits of organizations that get transformation right.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak talk about their own underwhelming pandemic lockdown-inspired achievements. Listen in for more.

There is no status quo when it comes to skills. New technologies, new realities and new challenges are arriving at a rapid-fire pace, leaving many previously skilled and experienced people on the outside looking in. That's why many organizations are embracing the need to reskill and upskill their workforce. But what exactly does that mean?

Shelley Osborne, corporate learning executive and author of "The Upskilling Imperative," explains and tells us why the ability to learn is the essential skill every organization and every individual needs to succeed. Interestingly, it's not about a specific skill. Rather, it's about creating an environment where learning can happen.

"When we do it well, and when we create these incredible learning cultures, and set people up to be growing and developing and upskilling, we make the best organizations — the most innovative, creative, interesting, amazing places to work," Shelley said.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How upskilling is different from reskilling.
• Why a learning mindset is the key to the future of work.
• The core tenets of a successful learning culture.
• How to avoid letting the mistakes of the past define how companies deliver learning in the future.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak share what teachers influenced them the most and come up with a new business idea.

In the past year, an invisible virus amped up anxiety and worry and threw workers into months of isolation. On top of that, long simmering tensions exploded into a blaze of social protests across the country, and the presidential election and storming of the U.S. Capitol showed just how divided society has become. The result is a perfect storm of conditions to sap employee mental wellbeing.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Andrew Shatté, pyschologist, author and chief knowledge officer at Mequilibrium, shares why companies need to get serious about mental health and start having real conversations about wellbeing at work. The reality is less than a third of employees will come out of this experience stronger and more resilient.

"There's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't strive for 100% of those people in our workforce to come out of this stronger if we take steps now and do the right thing," Andrew said. "And I think organizations right now are staring down a choice point and they do not want to be on the wrong side of history here."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why we're due for a renegotiation of the social contract between employers and employees.
• Managers' role in employee mental wellbeing and how to help them identify ways they can help.
• The seven skills to build a more resilient mindset.
• How the skills we learn now will help with the continued transformational change ahead.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak wonder just how awkward their face-to-face interactions will be as pandemic restrictions ease. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

Visionary strategy, talented people, management excellence, relentless execution, innovative products and services. They're all hallmarks of a successful business. But ... curiosity?

In this episode of Get Reworked, Simon Brown, chief learning officer at Novartis, and Garrick Jones of The Ludic Group make the case for curiosity as the competitive edge companies need today based on their business bestseller "The Curious Advantage." It lies at the heart of the essential skills needed to navigate an uncertain and constantly shifting future, they argue. And how you manage your people is how you'll unlock its value.

"A big part is actually managers, leaders within an organization creating that culture where people can learn, can experiment, can try things, can question, can challenge," Simon said.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why curiosity is the greatest driver of value in the digital age.
• The 7 C's of curiosity and how to develop them.
• The need for experimentation and multiple channels for thinking.
• How leaders can make experimentation a central part of business culture.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak talk through what they're curious about these days and why this conversation left them hankering for a Big Mac. Listen in for more.

Jobs are being pulled apart into tasks and projects. Degrees and credentials are being boiled down to their underlying skills and capabilities. The result is a reinvention of the way we think about work.

In this episode of Get Reworked, professor John Boudreau and futurist Ravin Jesuthasan share the highlights of their forthcoming book, "Work Without Jobs." The bottom line: The automation of work is leading not to the destruction of jobs, but rather to their deconstruction.

"All of those deconstructed elements are now going to live in a way on their own," said John. "They're no longer going to be exclusively bundled into jobs, job holders and degrees. And that requires mindsets, leadership approaches and HR systems that can manage and track and optimize at that deconstructed level."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why we need a new operating system for work.
• How internal talent marketplaces can match skills to opportunities.
• How deconstruction can put power into the hands of workers.
• Why and how HR needs to shift from being a steward of employment to a steward of work.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak talk through the far-reaching effects of automation and what that potentially means for individual workers and society at large. Listen in for more.

It's quite possible that people now entering the workforce could hold 20 or even 30 jobs over the span of a career that will last far longer than it has in the past. And the skills they learned to prepare for the jobs of today will be obsolete in record time.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Dr. Michelle Weise, senior advisor at Imaginable Futures, joins us to talk about what this all means for the future of workplace education. She shares insights from her recent book, Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don't Even Exist Yet. The short story? What we've done in the past isn't going to cut it anymore.

"With all these different kinds of rapid technological advancements and changes in artificial intelligence and machine learning and deep learning, we're going to actually have to skill up continuously and return to learning in order to remain competitive in that longer life," Michelle said.

In this episode, Michelle explains how medical advances are making a 150-year life span a reality, meaning the next generation of workers could very well have a career that spans a century. Highlights of the conversation include:

• What extended careers mean for education, both at school and at work.
• The role of companies in helping workers reskill and upskill.
• The skills we'll need to thrive in the jobs that haven't even been created yet.
• How lifelong learning is like a spiral staircase.

Plus, co-hosts Mike Prokopeak and Siobhan Fagan share how their first jobs quite possibly violated multiple child labor laws, but the lessons learned carry on to this day. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

It often feels like we're drowning in a sea of meetings, documents, notifications and alerts. And to some degree that's true. Information overload is bad for you and it's bad for business. But that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do about it.

In this episode of Get Reworked, David Lavenda joins us to put some perspective on the topic and how we can better manage the flood of information that comes our way. It's not the first time humanity has grappled with the challenge.

"Throughout history, every time a new information technology has been created or become popular, there's always been somebody who stepped in and said, 'This time it's different.'" he said. "Eventually things work themselves out and we move on."

In this episode, David explains how information overload isn't a new problem and what we can do to better manage it in our personal and professional lives. Highlights of the conversation include:

• The history of information overload and how every generation has to grapple with it.
• The three different kinds of information overload.
• How topic computing and new technology can help.
• Why AI isn't going to solve our problems.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan opens up about her Internet browser problem and she and co-host Mike Prokopeak set up a Slack conversation to initiate the Zoom meeting to create the Google Doc to address their channel overload problem.

Many companies have detailed corporate mission and vision statements, but do they have a real purpose? It's an important distinction to make as employees and customers increasingly expect companies to take a stand on issues outside of work.

Stacia Sherman Garr, principal analyst and co-founder of Red Thread Research, joins us to talk about her research into organizational purpose and how to build it into talent practices.

"In this time when so many of us have been working these long hours and have been having to maybe home school or take care of elders, we can't help but ask ourselves, why are we doing this?" she said. "What's our own purpose? And what's the purpose of the organization I'm working for? And is it worth it?"

In this episode, Stacia explains what the purpose-driven organization is and how it fits into the future of business. Highlights of the conversation include:

• The history of stakeholder capitalism and why the focus on shareholders is a relatively recent phenomenon.
• How the last year has shifted the conversation about organizational purpose and social impact.
• How leaders can be authentic and avoid "purpose-washing."
• The ways that organizations can embed purpose into practice from hiring to employee development.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak hear the voice of their internal skeptic and discuss whether or not this moment of corporate vulnerability and transparency will last.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].