In the ninth episode of our “In Conversation with…” podcast series for 2023, Lucy Lewis, partner at Lewis Silkin LLP, is joined by Paul Miller, Chief Creative Officer and founder of the Digital Workplace Group.
“We are living in a time which is no longer the industrial age, it’s not even the digital age; it is the living age.”
Lucy and Paul discuss the need for organisational adaptiveness and resilience to better withstand and respond to the current disruption and pressure on business, and explore concepts from Paul’s book ‘Nature of Work: The New Story of Work for a Living Age’. In this book, Paul draws on patterns from the natural world to provide leaders with the language and questions to evolve their workplaces from organisations to organisms.
Key takeaways from the conversation:
- Organisations are organisms: Companies seeking to build a sustainable organisation and to humanise workforce experiences can benefit from viewing their organisation as a dynamic and living thing rather than a rigid and industrialised structure.
- Corporate purpose is key: Companies must focus on taking corporate purpose from concept to practice and identify where they can have a direct impact at a local level.
- Leadership today is challenging: To succeed, leaders should consider adopting “servant leadership” and reflect on core values around meaning, purpose, empowerment and agility.
- Advances in generative AI are deeply significant: AI will change the way we work and raises important ethical and societal concerns. However, the current labour shortages experienced by many countries are likely to remain.
- We may need to rethink tax: As technology continues to significantly impact on jobs, debate is growing on the merits of an “AI tax”.
