From Burnout To Better: Fixing Our Overloaded Work Lives

Brent Kedzierski (left) and Andy Goram (right) discuss how to address the increases in work density and intensity

Is the modern workplace reaching breaking point? We’ve added more tech, more tasks, and more targets—but have we forgotten the human side of work?

In Episode 121 of Sticky From The Inside, I sit down with Brent Kedzierski—former Head of Global Learning Strategy at Shell and now at Hexagon—to talk about what’s broken in today’s work systems, and what we can do about it.

Brent brings a compelling lens to the conversation: the twin concepts of work density and work intensity. Together, they form a framework that helps explain the rise in stress, the drop in engagement, and why so many people feel like they’re drowning under the weight of modern work.

But more importantly, he offers a path forward—one that’s hopeful, human, and entirely possible.

💡 The Framework: Density vs. Intensity

• Work Density = structural clarity, flow, and reduction of friction

• Work Intensity = emotional connection, fulfilment, and personal meaning

Brent argues that many organisations are highly dense (complex systems, unclear expectations, information overload) but low on intensity (no sense of purpose, little agency, limited emotional reward). The result? A workforce that’s tired, disengaged, and looking for something more.

This idea aligns closely with Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, which shows that 44% of employees feel daily stress, and only 23% are engaged at work.

🤖 Is AI Accelerating the Problem? —Should We Rethink the System?

According to Brent, we're not just seeing a rise in data—we're experiencing a data explosion. He cites that 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years, and much of it is now created by AI. This creates “autocatalytic data”—information that multiplies faster than we can process it.

Add to that “algorithmic drift,” where AI-driven systems quickly become outdated, and you’ve got a recipe for confusion, inefficiency, and burnout.

As Brent says in the episode:

“What’s happening is automation is getting rid of the dull, dirty, dangerous, demeaning work... and that has to be replaced by higher-order cognitive thinking, the ability to collaborate with not only machines, but people unlike you.”

The opportunity is there—but only if we redesign systems to support human thinking, not just tech efficiency.

👥 Generational Friction Is a Leadership Challenge

One of the richest parts of the episode comes when Brent discusses the generational disconnect between Gen Z and older generations in the workplace.

“We are in an era of outdated industrial thinking... Gen Z doesn’t necessarily want to be leaders. They want fulfilled lives with interesting work where they’re continually learning and growing.”

It’s not that younger generations don’t want to work—they want work that makes sense. That integrates with life. That feeds curiosity and growth. That aligns with their values.

Meanwhile, many organisations are still designed around old mental models: rigid hierarchies, long tenure as a virtue, and leadership as the only path to success. As Brent puts it, “we still equate sitting at your desk with doing a good job.”

It’s time for leaders—especially Gen X, who currently hold many of the reins—to bridge the gap and help usher in a more human-centric model.

🧠 Redesigning Work for Human Good

At the heart of Brent’s message are four essential truths about humans that work systems need to honour:

1. Fallibility – Humans make mistakes. Systems must be forgiving.

2. Adaptability – People grow. Learning and flexibility must be built in.

3. Social Context – We are influenced by the environment and norms around us.

4. Purpose – Without meaning, work becomes transactional and soul-sapping.

He challenges leaders to go beyond measuring engagement or burnout—and start measuring the emotional footprint of their organisation. What kind of humans are you creating through the systems you’ve designed?

Brent puts it plainly:

“Companies have metrics on the health of their people—they’re just not using them. It’s time we started designing work that builds better humans.”

🎧 A Must-Listen for Leaders and Culture Builders

I hope this episode is a wake-up call for any leader tired of surface-level conversations about engagement, AI, and generational conflict. I think Brent brings clarity, insight, and a possible blueprint for change.

You can listen to the full episode using the player below, or read the following full transcript of the conversation.

Full Transcript

[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:48)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition-smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tons more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.

Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses. The sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.

Are We Making Work Too Intense?

Okay then, now the other week I was asking the question, have we made work too comfortable? As we discussed the opportunities and perils associated with the good and bad use of emotional intelligence. But now I'm asking the question, is work becoming too intense?

Are we drowning under the sheer density of tasks, data and digital interactions expected of us today? Or are we actually on the brink of something really exciting? Now, I am not an expert in AI and technology by any stretch of the imagination, but I am an optimist and an enthusiast.

So, what if the rise of AI and the shift towards Industry 5.0 isn't just about robots replacing us, but really looking at where technology advancements actually enhance our very humanity. Now, that may sound like I've swallowed some sort of pill, especially as many organisations and the people within them are currently grappling with an overwhelming surge in AI-generated content. And as we try to keep up, this concept of meaningful work that we talk about here, that core pursuit we focus on, can feel increasingly elusive.

What does meaningful work even look like in a landscape increasingly dominated by AI? Well, today I am delighted to welcome Brent Kedzierski, who's been exploring exactly these questions. Brent has developed a fascinating framework around work intensity and work density, aiming to help us navigate and reshape our relationship with work in this complex, fast-changing landscape.

Today, I hope we'll unpack what it really means to thrive in Industry 5.0, where humans and AI don't simply coexist, but collaborate in ways we've perhaps never imagined before. And with all this conversation around Millennials and Gen Zs in the workforce, we'll explore how a rising generation of Gen X leaders could actually hold the keys to unlocking a more human-centred future of work. And importantly, we'll tackle head-on the issues organisations face due to rapid advancements in AI and sometimes the chaotic influx of all this digital content.

So, if you're feeling the pinch of an ever-growing demand at work, if you're curious about how AI might actually help us become more human, or you're just wondering what's next for your own career, stick around, because this could genuinely shift how you think about work. Brent, welcome to the show, my friend.

Meet Brent Kedzierski: From Steel Mills to Shell to Shaping the Future of Work

[Brent Kedzierski] (3:48 - 3:50)

Hey, thanks, Andy. Thanks for having me on.

[Andy Goram] (3:50 - 4:41)

I am delighted that you're here. This whole thing about 5.0 and the influx of AI and everything getting more chaotic and more demanding, it'd be nice to try and take a breath and try and take a good look at this with some calmness, with a sense of serenity, rather than dealing with all this stuff like we are in a day-to-day basis. I can't see how many people I speak to now who are feeling more pressured under the sheer volume of work that's expected of them that's been generated by all this new tech and everything that we're dealing with today. But before we run headlong into that, do me a favour, will you? Just introduce yourself properly to the audience and tell us a little bit about you, what you're up to, and where your focus is today, my friend.

[Brent Kedzierski] (4:41 - 6:52)

Sure. I grew up in Pittsburgh, industrial city, as you know and your audience knows, big steel manufacturer, coal mining, railroads, and all of my generations before me worked in the steel mills and things like that. So all my genealogical pictures are grandfathers and grandmothers working in factories and mills.

And I grew up with this real Pittsburgh ethic of you shovel iron ore into the steel pit heavy and you work, work, work. And it's all about being very dense and intense in your work. I grew up with a lot of industrial jobs, putting myself through high school and college.

And then I ended up in DC working for the largest behavioural science company in the world, where we did a lot of research on what makes people perform, what makes them not perform. And then I worked my way to Shell for 25 years, ending up as the head of global learning strategy and innovation. And I dealt with all things around people and people's strategy.

And now I'm working with Hexagon because I had a real passion for helping companies that provide those kind of services, these human connection services, these connected worker ecosystems to really help them make their solutions much more human centric and much more effective. Because I had so much experience at Shell in putting these kind of systems in place and appreciating that, you know, 90 percent, 80 percent of digital transformation investments fail. They don't deliver the results that were intended and they don't produce for humans what the humans really need.

So that's kind of where I'm at today. I do a lot of the podcasting and writing on this whole idea of the future of work, what it means, where did we come from, throughout history? And, you know, what are the critical factors in society today that, you know, continually drive us to change and find new, innovative ways to help people and help industry progress?

[Andy Goram] (6:53 - 7:03)

Which is just such a huge topic. But where did your interest specifically get triggered on this work intensity and work density thing, Brent?

A Crash Course in the Five Industrial Revolutions

[Brent Kedzierski] (7:03 - 11:49)

Yeah, I think to set the context. So, you know, we have had four industrial revolutions throughout history, starting at about 1750. And now we're in what's called Industry 4, which is really what's rooted in cyber physical connectivity.

It kind of started with the iPhone. But before that, we had the, you know, Industry 1, which was really just about, you know, instead of using people and horses to do work, we used water and steam and things like that. And then we moved up to the second industrial revolution, where we started to use things like electricity.

And then we moved to the third in the 19, you know, around the 1950s, where we started to use computers to drive industry. And then in 2011, we started this whole idea of Industry 4, where we could take sensors and drones and internet of things and blockchain and connect and unite data systems. And, you know, to basically, you know, centralize and align data and content together.

But the fatal technology trap in that was, it was a heavy-handed focus on technology, where we left out the humans in that, you know, we created this idea where people were desperately afraid of what technology was going to do to them. So what that did is that really spawned this Industry 5 that really hasn't taken off as much as I'd like to see it. But Industry 5 is really about, you know, humans, it's about waste reduction, it's about advancing society, it's about environmental and social responsibility.

Now, just to summarize this point, and then we'll move on to kind of this whole data surge that we're in now, what's driving this next phase is that, you know, the world has always worked in what I refer to as the teacup model. It's basically DECOP. So it's technical.

So what are the technical advances that drive industrial change? What are the economic changes that drive industrial change? What are the consumer kind of things that drive industrial change?

And if you think of this, you know, when early humans started to make fire, it took them tens of hours to create as much light that now somebody does in a half a second by turning on a light switch. So, you know, you've seen this great efficiency of things just as simple as, you know, illumination and light, and what illumination did for the work. So in industry, you know, one time people only could work when it was daylight.

Now when they had electricity plants, and one of the first 24-7 hour plants was a shell plant in California, where because of light, they could have, you know, they could work 24-7. So these kind of things change, and to continue, so then you have the operational changes and the political changes. So if you look at where we're at today in society, you know, we've got, again, the technology, what's AI doing and driving work?

If you started the show with, what is the economic issues going on? Now we're seeing all these things with the trade wars and tariffs and all this kind of stuff, how's that going to impact industry? And then the consumerism, so we've gone to this now high-touch, high-concept solution phase where everybody wants everything personalized, and they want everything to do everything for them.

So, you know, flashlight's no longer a flashlight anymore, it's a flashlight, it's a compass, it's a phone charger, you know, it's all these things that we're packing in a big, dense product. And then operationally, you know, we're seeing how things are changing, and then politically, you know, you've got Ukraine, you've got the Gaza Strip, you know, all these things are driving the world to change, and this is what happened throughout industry. So every industry followed the model to kind of drive the next industrial revolution.

And so that's kind of where we're at with all of this. So that sets the tone for, you know, how we've advanced in industries, and then how we are, you know, shaping and being driven to shape work and to shape the combination of work people, work intensity, work density. And before I go, the next thing I really want to talk to you about is, you know, what's this AI surge, and what's it doing to us, but I'll stop there if you have any thoughts.

[Andy Goram] (11:50 - 13:31)

I think there are sort of three things that I want to dig into across the course of this episode. One is where we are now in the 5.0 piece, because I think, well, there are some fundamental differences to this era we're wandering into than previous. And that has a clear effect on us.

And I think it's really interesting that you've already sort of said, it's not gone as far as I would have liked. You know, some people don't think it started, if you look at Japan, it's being built into their budgets and everything. They're working pretty flat out, I think, in trying to address 5.0. The second thing, because I am all about the people bit, I think the perspective that you have talked about in other places that I've researched around the future of work, and particularly maybe almost the forgotten generation group of Gen X, because there's a lot of talk about millennials and Zs in the workplace at the moment. But still the vast majority of leadership comes from Xs. So I'm interested to sort of see your thoughts on what they can do. And then of course, yes, AI and the surge of all this content that we're kind of dealing with.

But just to sort of package off the 5.0, why do you think this era we're heading into is fundamentally different from the previous ones? Is it pace of change? Is it type of change?

Is it the human relationship thing? Is it all these things? Because I'm sure I've read somewhere that you talk about something around the topic of cognitive augmentation in that we're having to think differently, and we will think even more differently when we get into this 5.0 world, where the world of AI is absolutely supposed to be there to enhance human lives. Right.

The AI Explosion: Autocatalytic Data and Algorithmic Drift

[Brent Kedzierski] (13:32 - 17:35)

Okay. So we take our Gen Xers today. Now, we used to have digital fluency and digital natives and all this kind of stuff.

And that's really driven by the data explosion that we're in, this whole AI bit. By 2026, 90% of all online content will be AI generated. And another 90% statistic is that 90% of the world's data has been created in the last two years.

So what AI is doing is creating this phenomena called autocatalytic data. So it basically refers that data creates more data. So systems like AI use data to learn, and then they generate even more data.

And it's making it so fast that it's not only means that it's generating the data, it's making existing data become very quickly outdated. So in order to stay relevant in terms of decision making and everything else and flexibility, and being able to be agile as organizations, people and companies need to get a hold of their data. We're seeing even one of the statistics that I like to look at is I've studied the history of industry.

And you know, the half life of a publicly traded company years ago used to be decades. And now it's about 10 years. And that's just because they're not, you know, managing their data, things are changing so fast.

And you know, you just get this craziness. And the same thing with skills, you know, the half life of skills now is about three to five years. And even in like fields like medical, they say that the medical knowledge is updating every 73 days.

And that was back in 2020. So, you know, this is kind of the stuff that's happening. But then there's a lot of negatives with it.

So, you know, there's this concept that your listeners may or may not have ever heard of, it's called dark data. And this is the whole thing that basically 80 plus percent of all data that an organization collects, or creates, will never be seen again, never used. And that's really creating a lot of significant energy demands across the globe.

Right now, just storing data that's not being used, it represents almost 5% of the total electricity consumption in the US. And there's projections that says by, you know, later in the 2020s, in 2028, it's going to possibly be, you know, 10 plus percent. So, you know, this is the kind of stuff that we've got to get.

And the other that I'll close with this is there's this another concept called algorithmic drift. And if we're talking about AI, and people that are in the AI space, will know this, because AI driven content systems, so all the AI systems, they will lose the relevance and their accuracy, because data is going and changing and coming in so fast, that the data in these AI models very quickly becomes outdated. And just think about this in practical terms, think about your Amazon profile, you know, you're looking at the ratings for Amazon products, and you want to buy a shirt or a lawnmower, and you're going on reviews that have been generated by the consumer.

Well, what happens when all those reviews from the AI models are outdated, and you don't buy something because it reviews when actually they fix the product, and it really now would take reviews. And that leads you to, you know, this next concept that I really want to get into is the Gen Zers, how they look at work today, and how do we fix that for them?

Work Density and Intensity: Fixing the Chaos of Modern Work

[Andy Goram] (17:36 - 18:46)

The data thing is fascinating, right? There's an awful lot of things that we're dealing with. And it's interesting, you talk about the energy piece, we've all probably experienced that recent AI trend where everybody's making themselves out to be some doll in a blister pack.

And I read a piece of the day in the news, the amount of energy that is being consumed on that, I guess that frivolous trend within AI is untold. And yet, we are largely kind of blinkered to the amount of energy that's consumed in with all this technology, with all this AI stuff in our day to day, but it's only going to increase, right? And I think the thing for me around the AI, which is what I'm really interested in is, I think people sit in two camps.

I don't know how you think, Brent, one, it's all doom and gloom, this AI, it's gonna take all our jobs, it's probably gonna do an Arnold Schwarzenegger and murder us. And the other side of the world is kind of like, hey, this is gonna be amazing, this is gonna sort of free us up to be more creative, be more human, spend more time, have a three-day week. I mean, there couldn't be more polar opposites if we tried.

Where do you think it's going to play out, Brent, from what you see?

[Brent Kedzierski] (18:47 - 19:52)

Well, I think that brings us into this topic that I've been working on, this whole idea of work density and intensity. So the work density aspect is all about structural foundation. It's about how do you build in focus, clarity, and flow into work systems?

So again, most work systems are rampant with interruptions, delays, bottlenecks, unclear performance expectation. I know Gartner did a study, and it's this disconnect between employee expectations and managerial thinking is there's this huge disconnect where managers think they give great feedback, while employees say they don't. Managers think that people have all the resources they need to perform flexibly and intently, but they don't.

So, you know, there's this real disconnect when you look at the research about what is and what's the perception of the actual employees. It's really all about helping people think clearly as they do their jobs.

[Andy Goram] (19:53 - 20:00)

Those disconnects have always been there, though, right? Are they just intensifying or getting worse for what you research?

[Brent Kedzierski] (20:01 - 22:10)

Yeah, they're getting worse because we've got, you know, work environments are inherently more complex. There's more data. There's, you know, we've got, we've gone from hierarchical organizations to matrix organizations.

So, you know, you're just not dealing with up and down, you're dealing with, you know, up and down across the sides. So, there's a lot more complexity into work. And again, automation is requiring the human cognitive, creative, and collaborative abilities increase exponentially because what's happening is automation is getting rid of the dull, dirty, dangerous, demeaning, you know, physically demanding work.

And that has to be replaced by, you know, higher order cognitive thinking, the ability to collaborate with not only machines, but people and not only people that are like you, but unlike you in terms of organizational structures, you know, and the whole way to how do we be creative and how do humans fill in the gaps of creativity and innovation that AI can't. So, this is the other side of the coin. So, work density, help them think clearly, but then work intensities is help them care deeply about what they're doing, help them feel more fulfilled.

And this is where we go with the Gen Zers because, you know, they don't want to, you know, work to live. They want, and it's not about work like balance anymore where it's kind of a two-dimensional thing. Oh, I'm overstressed at work.

I need a little bit more balance in my life. No, it's about how does work complement your personal life? You know, how do you basically integrate your work into your personal life so you become more of a whole person so you don't become John or Jane in the office and then John and Jane, you know, at the social parties.

So, you know, it's trying to elevate the human psyche so that there's a better payout across people's effort and work.

[Andy Goram] (22:11 - 22:45)

We've got conflict with that right now, right? Because some of the older generations have a problem with that reset that's kind of going on with the Zeds and started probably with the millennials, particularly at work in that there's this where this disconnect comes about, well, they don't want to work. They don't know what work is and they're not working as hard as we are.

They're not doing the hours. They're not carrying the scars that we had to in the past. And I think that's a really interesting issue that many businesses are trying to work through.

Do you see that yourself?

Generational Disconnect: Gen Z vs. Old-School Work Thinking

[Brent Kedzierski] (22:45 - 26:17)

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, we are in an era of outdated industrial thinking. Yeah.

And, you know, because what we've done is we have grown over the last hundred years on what we call traditional efficiency centric work models, things like Taylorism, EQM, business process engineering, lean methodologies. And all these things did was design work to kind of suck more out of people. So, you know, squeeze as much productivity out of the people as you could.

And basically, people were just another variable in the system. And too often, managers looked at people to be something to be kind of pressured and controlled and managed. And so, you know, there was too much kind of mental friction in that economy.

So, you know, there were workloads and people would do a BPR process for engineering, but they wouldn't provide the right support structures to help them deal with the change or help them give them enough support and guidance to deal with updated systems. You know, they always worked for output, ignoring anything about fatigue and, you know, what was the purpose. And, you know, and also there was never any room for agency, you know, because we tried to overstandardize things and it really left workers feeling kind of powerless and disengaged.

And that's kind of the density thing. So, we really engineered a current work system that was based on these traditional efficiency-centric models. At the same time, what that did to work intensity is the work became mindless.

I mean, if you think about, you know, Taylorism, you know, that whole concept was to say, we're going to simplify work so much that, you know, a person's basically equivalent to a shovel, you know, we get the right shovel for the right task. Same thing with assembly lines, you know, we're going to break the assembly parts down so that, you know, somebody could just specialize in putting rivets in something. So, this whole idea of, you know, the personal connection to work, the control was taken away, you know, and we built these silos through hierarchies that, you know, they were top-down structures and that weakened the whole idea of collaboration.

So, you know, people lost their spark. And so, people got really frustrated with work. And you're seeing that today with the Gen Zers that, you know, they don't want to work for a company for 30 years.

You know, they want employability, not employment. They want to be able to have a career that's, you know, varied and interesting and, you know, they're continually learning and growing. They're not sitting in a position or a job for 30 years and hoping to advance to a leadership level.

And that's the whole baggage that we've got with this mental model is the only way you're really successful in today's organization is if you're a leader, if you move up the ladder. Well, a lot of the Gen Zers don't necessarily want to be leaders. They want to have a fulfilled life where they're, you know, got interesting work and they're continually learning and growing and, you know, stretching their intellectual and emotional capacities.

Work needs to put in place significant intellectual and emotional experiences. And again, the people that design work today are still focused on this old level thinking.

[Andy Goram] (26:18 - 27:07)

I mean, that is the challenge, isn't it? We mentioned in the in the intro, this changing landscape and a lot of focus on millennials and Zeds in the workplace. I think globally in about the next six years, two thirds of the workforce are going to be millennials and Zeds, right?

And but working with those guys in many of those leadership positions are going to be Xs who come from a different upbringing with some of that older school mentality still intact, although they can be adaptable and flexible to today's environment, but it's not as native as the Zeds. So what can and what should X leaders be learning from Zeds to help move this stuff forward and adopting the AI technology changes that we're seeing to make a workplace, in your words, that can be more fulfilling and meaningful?

[Brent Kedzierski] (27:08 - 29:54)

So I think the essence of what industry doesn't get. And again, I studied this because there's cycles, you know, and at any given time, there's like four generations in work. But what happens is like, say, for example, me as a gen excer.

So I grew up in a generation that had certain values. And I went in the companies. And when I first started working in my first company, I was in a work ecosystem that was built and managed by boomers.

Okay. And so that I was working in a boomer orientated value centric environment that was based on how they viewed the world. And that's why I had one of my managers one time, a senior VP that I was a young character.

And he would walk around the office to make sure people were sitting at their desks. And my idea was, well, I added more value by getting up with clients and, you know, building relationships and not sitting in my office. And so there was a disconnect.

So, you know, so for him, good was sitting at my desk. For me, good was getting out and making hybrid relationships. And so just like today, you know, you've got a little bit of boomers in there.

You've got a lot of Gen Xers, you got millennials and you got you got zeers. And what's going on is the zeers and the millennials are really being dictated in the value system and work based on the Gen Xers and the boomers and how they see the world and how they think the world should be managed. And I think what executives need to understand is those zeers are going to be the leaders one day and they're going to also have to understand that there's going to be alphas after them.

And so, you know, it's this myopic view that leaders have about how the world should work. And when we really talk about diversity, it should be this intellectual about how people approach values and work and feelings and connection and purpose and all those kind of things. And again, you know, I look at my son, you know, he shops at thrift stores, which is great because he wants kind of a circular economy.

You know, he buys his products based on their social contribution, maybe a beer that gives back to some cause or something like that. So, you know, they have a different composition of how they rule and run their life. And again, you don't get other generations doing that.

So, every generation is different. And I think we need to understand the generational differences and make work more accommodating for those.

[Andy Goram] (29:55 - 30:47)

It's really interesting. I saw a piece of research. I've referenced it on this podcast many times.

But this is a cyclical thing. Every generation goes through this thing and thinks that the new generation doesn't know how to work, doesn't want to work. It's generally down to the doing things differently.

And we go through this cycle. But with the landscape changing as rapidly as it is now on the back of the tech and the AI, what do we need to do? Because it's fine just to sort of say we need to be more accommodating of the way Zeds and millennials think in organizations.

But how do we make that happen? What are some of the tips, the tricks? What are the successful guys doing to try and help shift this mindset?

Because we're in danger, I think, of just going through the same old thing and another generation getting frustrated by the one or two generations ahead of them.

The Four Human Truths of Meaningful Work

[Brent Kedzierski] (30:47 - 34:49)

So, I always go back and I go to the first principles. The first principle is humans all share four things. So, the first thing is that people are all fallible.

People are going to make mistakes because they're not machines. And you have to have in your systems things like psychological safety that allow people to be fallible. But the other thing is people are adaptable so that they can grow and change and they're supposed to.

So, this is the whole idea. And I get frustrated with organizations today because they always want to do innovation. But typically, organizations never budget learning into their innovation.

And because if you do something that's really anything worth doing well, it's going to cost you in terms of cognitive and physical resources. They want to innovate, but then they don't want to have to pay a price to innovate in terms of learning and delays and other things. And I saw this at Shell where I would do big projects and we would do big innovative things like the world's largest digital reality training system.

And it was the first one in the world to be that large. Well, when I was managing it, we did a lot of learnings that I had to pay for. I didn't know that we paid to have the vendor build the system, but they never told me that I had to pay a million dollars to have it distributed on the cloud.

Well, guess what? When my executives found out that I wanted another million dollars, they weren't very happy. But at the end of the day, they really thumped their chest that they had just delivered one of the world's best learning systems and that helped them with union relations and everything else.

So again, people are fallible. People are adaptable. That's the good news.

And also, people need social context. So they're social beings. Are they in line with the values and norms around them?

And the last thing is purpose. So anytime you look at work, you have to say, look, are we allowing people to be fallible learning growth? Are we giving people the right social context so that we not only show them good behavioural models and things like that, but we're basically building a better social ecosystem?

And the last thing is, are we really giving them purpose so that they go home? And remember, when these things fail, this is this medical epidemic that we have in work. I always say that 75 percent of primary care physician visits are about work-related stress.

There's statistics that says that your direct manager has about as much impact on your physical mental well-being as your spouse. We've got an obesity epidemic. We've got a drug and alcohol abuse epidemic.

We've got these things, these bad behaviours driven by people frustrated and not happy at work leads to all those things, like the alcohol abuse, drug addiction, and sedentary lifestyle. And what that's doing is that's creating this cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, cancers, all this kind of stuff. And companies are going to learn that there's an emotional footprint that they leave behind, just not an environmental footprint.

And I think that that's going to be something that's take more of a centre stage. Just think if we had a metric that says which companies are burning the people out the most and which companies are creating the unhealthiest workers across the world, instead of having metrics like what's a low burnout rate or what's a high flow optimization rate? How often do people feel great and flowful and happy in their work?

We don't do metrics like that because companies don't place value on that.

[Andy Goram] (34:50 - 35:16)

And I think that sort of points nicely to this sort of final piece about, in your mind, in your vision, Brent, when you look at what meaningful work looks like in the context of heading towards 5.0, generational shift, surge of AI content, what do you think that nirvana looks like? What are the sort of building blocks? Is it back to the fallibility, social context, and purpose?

How do we bring all this stuff together?

Designing Work That Feeds the Brain, Not Just the Bottom Line

[Brent Kedzierski] (35:16 - 39:33)

Well, I think it's all about, you know, we've got to look. Look, you know, again, you know, humans, for the longest time, have been doers. I mean, you know, you need somebody to run a cash register.

You need somebody to, you know, shovel moth. You need somebody to fill out your accounting paperwork. And, you know, companies basically focused on how do we efficiently get the task done that we need to get done?

But what they're realizing now, or what they're seeing, I don't know if they're realizing it, is, you know, disengagement rates are at 80 plus percent. You know, mental health's an issue. You know, all these things.

So this next evolution, you know, is about not only producing products, but producing healthy people that produce those products or services or deliver those services. I always look at a couple things. Like, you know, you've got to design with human centricity, and there's principles of human centricity.

So the main principle is you put people at the centre of design of work systems, and you design with the people, not just for them. And the next thing I always like to say, this old adage I learned years ago, you know, it was from some psychological or some research that was done, contented cows give better milk. Now, I'm not equating people to cows, but what they did in the research is cows that had healthy environments, were fed well, you know, got their sunlight, you know, were well taken care, they produced higher quality milk.

It was just a physiological thing. And it's the same thing with people. I mean, if you give people the right mixture of brain chemical enhancing, you know, activities, they're going to be healthier, mentally better balanced, and they're going to be, you know, more engaged and produce more.

But then the last thing I'd say is, you know, a solution is not a solution till it works. And what we've got ourselves into in this world is that we, you know, we got to manage the facts in industry, or the facts are going to manage you. We've been living with things that we've known in industry for decades now, you know, this whole war for talent, and then there was the whole movement to, you know, it's about work experience, and we're the experience age, but we're not doing anything about it.

And so, you know, without working on the problems with the data, you know, you're just another person with an opinion. And, you know, and so your facts will manage you like we're seeing today. We've known for a long time that people have been disengaged, and they're not happy.

And we've known the medical issues and things like that. I mean, companies do the tracking. I mean, they have to pay insurance carriers, and insurance carriers give them reports on how many of their people have physicals, what percent of those people given physicals were obese, you know, what percent of the people are smoking, what percent of the people have, you know, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure.

So, I mean, organizations have the metrics on the health and well-being of their people, you know, but they're not using that. So, and the last thing I'd say is, you know, anything that you look at in terms of human centricity and work, I always use the rule called problem rule assumption. And what that means is that we've got a lot of problems in the work ecosystem today.

Those problems are based on a lot of antiquated rules that we still follow. And those rules are based on assumptions that we've always had. And I think today with AI, the shift to industry five, we have to start challenging those underlying foundational assumptions that we've been basing and designing work on for decades.

And that's the problem that we had. So, I could give you a list probably of, you know, the 10 top assumptions that we have about people and work that are driving the rules that govern organizations today and those rules that are creating the problems that we're facing that you see that, you know, the statistics show.

Sticky Notes: Brent’s Top 3 Takeaways for Thriving in Industry 5.0

[Andy Goram] (39:33 - 40:13)

I mean, there's so much we could dig into in here, but we just don't have the time because it's such a huge topic. But I've listened to your take on what the future might look like, but I've come to the bit in the show that I call sticky notes, which is where, and in this topic particularly, it seems like a monumental challenge. I'm just trying to get down to your three key bits of advice for people thinking about or maybe even wrestling with heading into this reshaping of the working environment going through.

If you could put all of your knowledge into three little sticky notes of advice, what would you put on your sticky notes, Brent?

[Brent Kedzierski] (40:14 - 42:38)

Oh, sticky notes. Well, I think, you know, I think that the one thing we always got to take away with everything you look at in the world, you've got to make sure you have the right context. You know, if you think about like the news today and media and, you know, what happens when the news media delivers information to the consumers that's out of context, creates a lot of problems, right?

You know, what happens when we don't challenge our mental models, that we basically are okay with the status quo and we don't challenge it? And I say this, that sometimes the status quo is good. You want to maintain consistency and things like that.

But there's certain times that you have to really, you know, catch up and really challenge existing systems. And I guess the last thing that I would say is that, you know, I worry today about organizations. I do a lot of consulting with big organizations.

And what I'm finding is organizations are creating this terrible lack of psychological safety where, you know, they're requiring so much consensus building and so much risk aversion that they're not doing the things that they really need to do. Because what happens is people will exchange the hard choice for tomorrow for the easier choice today. And I see too many organizations basically punting and saying, well, you know, let's not do the hard thing today.

Let's do something easier and we'll just deal with it later on and let some other generation deal with it. So that's what I would say is, you know, those are the kind of things that, you know, this change, you know, again, anything we're doing is going to be hard to do. And I don't think people understand that the good things are hard.

And anytime I did a big change at Shell, that's because I had a basically a DNA and a reputation that I would do the very, very hard things. And they were very hard, very stressful to do. But they are the things that delivered the greatest value.

Wrapping Up: What’s Next for Leaders and Organisations

[Andy Goram] (42:39 - 42:57)

And we're all about value, my friend. So much food for thought, so many things to think about after today's conversation. Brent, I have loved meeting you and I have really, really enjoyed listening to you.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Before I let you go, where can people find out a bit more about you? Where can they get in contact?

[Brent Kedzierski] (42:57 - 43:14)

I'm obviously on LinkedIn. Anybody that wants to, I love to have new members of the family. Hexagon, you can go to the Hexagon website.

A lot of my articles and webinars and things like that are on there, if you want to download that. And, you know, there's some other links that I'll give you that you could put in the show notes.

[Andy Goram] (43:15 - 44:01)

Perfect. We'll put it all in there. Brent, absolute pleasure meeting you, my friend.

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, sir. Okay, everyone, that was Brent Kozurski.

And if you'd like to find out a bit more about him or any of the topics that we've covered in today's show, please check out the show notes. So, that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward.

If you have, please like, comment, and subscribe. It really helps. I'm Andy Gorham, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.