-- Intro--
Chris Moriarty
Hello and welcome to the Workplace Geeks podcast where we find and celebrate the most exciting and inspiring workplace research in the world.
I'm one of your hosts Chris Moriarty. And I'm joined by Ian Ellison, who we'll hear from in a moment. So who are we? Well, I'm a Marketing and Communications guy, who, for the last decade has found himself in the facilities management sector, but quickly ended up talking about, researching and observing workplaces and workplace change. So that's me, Ian, why don't you give us a little bit of background on Mr. Ellison.
Ian Ellison
Okay, so I've been in and around workplace for over two decades, looking back. I've been an operational facilities manager that actually led me into academia, study, and then as an academic, as a senior lecturer. And now I'm a workplace change consultant, which isn't bad for an accidental career in something that I didn't even know existed.
Chris Moriarty
So, look, this podcast started off as an idea of mine in the year that I became a freelancer. I wanted to stay in touch with the workplace community and was particularly interested in the research angle within it. So I guess this was my way of doing that, and given me some form of identity within it. But I bounce the idea off of you Ian, didn't and you had a slightly different perspective, why don't you tell us how you saw this taking shape?
Ian Ellison
Yeah, well, just listening to you, Chris, your idea was kind of singular. It's about workplace geek. It was about you. And it was about you kind of keeping your hand hold in new knowledge and stuff like that. But actually, well, if we turn it plural, for starters, if we make it workplace geeks, you and me. And then that was the first idea but when we kind of thought, well, actually, workplace geeks really can apply to everybody interested in workplace. So we thought the podcast it kind of unfolded, and we thought the podcast had the potential to become, and I know this is a bit of an overused metaphor, but a journey, a voyage of discovery, something that we can all use to learn together.
Chris Moriarty
Why did you think that was so important?
Ian Ellison
Well, on the one hand, it feels like there's never been so much interest in all things workplace related, and we've got a certain global event to blame for that. So that's kind of good, right? But on the other, it feels like all this interest has led to more noise and opinion than ever. So to put it bluntly, we want to using one fascinating piece of work per episode as our starting point, understand why it's important to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to become more capable of doing it.
Chris Moriarty
So this is episode one, which is obviously very exciting, but it also means that we have a slightly different format to how all the other episodes will feel. On this launch episode, we've invited several guests to help us set the scene and make the case for a podcast like this that aims to navigate the sometimes complicated, sometimes downright scary, and sometimes controversial world of workplace research. Now moving forward, we'll be focused on a specific piece of research, whether it's a project or a study, and we'll be talking with the individuals or the teams behind them. But before we go any further, it's only fair to explain our approach and lay out our ground rules upfront. Our guiding principles, you might say, So Ian, would you like to rattle off our five workplace gates commandments.
Ian Ellison
So number one, we focus on evidence based insights, not opinions. Number two, we talk with the people directly involved in the work that we're exploring. Number three, our discussions should enhance understanding and capability in a friendly and informal way. Number four, we see workplace as a broad church, which involves people and culture, workspaces, and technology. And number five, we seek out different perspectives to encourage broader awareness, potentially, between disciplines.
Chris Moriarty
Before we set off on this episode, it's probably worth us making sure that you're on the right podcast. So we've spoken about how at the heart of this is workplace research. So let's just unpack that slightly. Ian, please furnish us and our listeners with an interpretation of that idea of workplace research. First off workplace, you said, it's a broad church. What did you mean by that?
Ian Ellison
Okay, so when I say broad church, what we're thinking about is workplace it involves people and culture. So how they're working, and whether they're working together and alone. It involves technology, the tools that they're using, to get their job done, the tools that are available to them. It involves the spaces wherever they work, and that might be in buildings or beyond. And it's all in service of their business output as they work towards the goals that they're doing. So, if you like we can think of people, technology, spaces, we can think about those things as what I'm going to call a socio-technical system. And that it means it involves social things as humans, and it involves technical things, the space and the technology, and it's all in service of the business outputs. Now, that’s quite interesting and already some people might be going ‘Really? Are you sure?’ Because some would say that workplaces are purely physical, right? They're the buildings that we work within there they are places they are locations. Now, they're not wrong. But we're going to argue that equally, they're not entirely right. And that's because so this is like big word alert, Chris, workplace is polysemic. It's a word with different and coexisting meanings. And that's really good, because it means that because it's a broad church, we can kind of put our arms around different perspectives, and everybody can relate to it in different ways. But what we have to be careful of is that we're not making assumptions that other people understand workplace the way we do. So it's about bringing these different ideas together.
Chris Moriarty
So we've talked about the word workplace being polysemic. And having this kind of very broad, meaning, the second half of our kind of core, research, that's could equally be misinterpreted. So let's be clear, with everyone straight off the bat. What is it that we mean by research?
Ian Ellison
Right? So I thought a quick dictionary type definition would help us here. So when I looked around, I found a ‘systemic investigation into and study of something’ now something's very broad, but we'll come back to that, ‘in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions’. So from that we get the research is kind of based on interest or the need to know more about something. That is planned. So it's structured is designed, it's justified, it might even need specific skills or knowledge to be able to do it well. And the other thing that we need to be really careful of is it doesn't have to be about finding something new. That's, that's often a trap that we fall into. Research always has to tell us something new, it has to make a new contribution. Actually, good research might reinforce something that we already knew, something existing. And it might kind of enhance our knowledge in that direction. Now, there's loads more to get into around methods and methodologies, and the natural and the social sciences and ethics and the nature of truth and all sorts of stuff like that, right? But let's let that unfold over the coming episodes, depending upon where this takes us, Chris. For now, that's what workplace is a broad church, thinking about people spaces, technology, in service of business. And research is this systemic way of going about learning about things?
Chris Moriarty
Now, I think what's important to note there is that part of our role is to help unpack some of the mystic language and processes that surround academic research, the aim being that we make the powerful ideas and insights contained within them as accessible as possible. And that's an idea that both our guests talk about on this episode. So look, we've explained the mission, we've explained the format, we've even explained what we mean by workplace research. Now, let's get to our guests for this episode. So today, we are joined by Mark Eltringham, who's the editor of a number of publications, but most notably, the highly respected online title Workplace Insight, as well as the IN Magazine. He's closely followed by Dr. Matt Tucker, who's a reader in workplace and Facilities Management at Liverpool John Moores University. And finally, we'll be making a call to our good mate buddy pal, Dr. James Pinder, from 3edges to get his reflections on what our guests spoke about. So first up, Mark Eltringham.
--Mark Eltringham Interview--
Chris Moriarty
Hi, Mark, welcome to Workplace Geeks, I'm just before we get going, can you give us a little bit of an intro and perhaps point to some work that people may have heard of that you've been involved with?
Mark Eltringham
My official title is that I am the publisher of Workplace Insight. And IN Magazine, and I am also the European director of a journal called Work&Place
Ian Ellison
Workplace Insight. Am I right in saying that in terms of like your readership, stats, your hit stats is the most visited, certainly in the UK in the world workplaces? Website?
Mark Eltringham
Yeah, I think certainly in, in the workplace sector, in the broader sense, I think, certainly in the UK, we were claimed to be the most read
Chris Moriarty
On your website, on the on the strap line, you've made a real point of talking about people, places, and technology, which is, you know, close to the people, place, process that we often hear for those that work in the world of facilities management. So just talk us through why you really wanted to almost put that on your masthead and make that really, really prominent on the on the work that you do.
Mark Eltringham
I mean, it's a borrowed idea, you know, as a lot of these things are, you know, I wouldn't claim it for ourselves. But there's this idea that the workplace exists at the intersection of those three, three factors. So if you if you create a Venn diagram as say, somebody like Frank Duffy did back in the sort of late 80s. That's where workplaces at the center of that, he perhaps used to say office, but I think we'd now sort of more generically say we're pleased meaning digital and cultural space as well as physical space. But and I think the there is actually a reason why we've put people first as well because I think my experience of, when we used to talk about offices, as distinct from all the other facets of the workplace. It was always the bits of our people that were interesting to me. And I think that's, that's what really makes an interesting story about, about anything to do with the workplace is how people respond to each other, and to their surroundings, and to their technology and stuff like that.
Chris Moriarty
How has it felt as a workplace journalist who's close to the action, who's close to all the different component parts? You said before, this isn't new this is, you know, we were talking about this before, but so you've, you've been tracking that. So how's it felt being on the inside looking at that, and seeing how things have evolved?
Mark Eltringham
I think the major changes the scale of what's happened, I think it's a conversation that now involves everybody, whereas I think, for 20/30 years, whatever that I've been, you know, looking at it, it's kind of it's been perhaps pertinent for everybody, but it's not actually really sort of pushed ahead in the way it has over the last two years. But you know, they were all instant experts. You know, and people were expressing views, and not maliciously or something like that. And there's been a lot of vested interests, fogging up the conversation as well, from all sides, tech firms have done it, property firms have done it, you know, at different points in the conversation. So all these things have served to distort the conversation. I think that's, that's kind of it. And I think where I've tried to push back on is to say, actually, you've got to look at this in a, in a different way. We already know a lot of stuff about this.
Ian Ellison
When you were talking earlier, Mark, and I've heard you talk about this before. And I think it's an absolutely fascinating topic, it's making me there's a couple of definitions of critical thinking, which Chris, I'm going to dig out. And we can talk about later, because they're really interesting. But that bit, you said there about positionality, that the tech folks within the pandemic have got a particular agenda because it benefits them, the property folks have got a potentially different agenda, because that benefits them. And we so it feels to me, like we so often find ourselves debating what we would say are facts without forgetting about who's got the vested interest in the given fact that's being discussed.
Mark Eltringham
Well I think that's obviously something we've seen a lot of I mean, it's, you know, every day, we will publish surveys from firms. And we try and filter out the ones that are too obviously a business case for what they do. But you know, you can see them, we leave it to readers a lot of the time, you know, you can see when a question is loaded?
Ian Ellison
What are your thoughts about workplace knowledge and how workplace knowledge has tracked over time?
Mark Eltringham
Well, I think what's interesting is the way that perhaps some, I mean, it's become more data led recently, you know, I think it's easier to generate data. I mean, like I said, before, you know, when I read the DEGW studies, that was a handful of people in office with a clipboard were, you know, noting when somebody got off up from the desk and went to, to do things and then maybe have a questionnaire or something with people. So now you can have sensors and online questionnaires, you know, that happen in real time and generate large quantities of data. And I think what's interesting is the way that those perhaps backup what we learned earlier, but at the same time, I think the proliferation of data can mislead people as well, you know, I think this is, and this is not just apparent in the workplace sphere.
Ian Ellison
So is that one of the challenges that we face right now, because it's so much easier, and potentially more sort of accepted culturally, to gather workplace data. We can gather it but understanding it and asking critical questions of it, that's something else and that's a different skill.
Mark Eltringham
Well, I think it is, isn't it? I mean, you're an academic, you know, you know, that average is, you know, can hide things as well as reveal them, can't they? So if you are generating lots of information, if you're taking averages from it, you've got to be careful about how you're interpreting that for the application. In the real world.
Ian Ellison
Let's talk more generally about, you know, high quality workplace research. So whether it's academic or whether it's more commercially led, do you see good solid workplace research making its way into commercial practice into you know, the way the industry does things, the way the industry encourages occupiers to do things. Do you see that kind of, you know, because it's, I guess, if you think about it, it's almost like, you know, universities, academic bodies, professional bodies, their role is to, in different ways, trigger great research and insights, and get them into the industry so that people can make use of them. Is it that simple? Do you see that happening?
Mark Eltringham
Well, I think what it needs and I think we've talked about this before, is one of the things I subscribe to is the British Psychological Society’s a weekly newsletter. And that takes academic research and presents it to a lay audience, like myself, because I would have neither the time or the inclination to work through academic papers and things that might interest me. That's assuming I've got access to them, of course, as well, which is the, which is the other problem. And I think the workplace sector would benefit from something along those lines.
Ian Ellison
Almost like a translation function, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Babel Fish?
Mark Eltringham
Yeah, that's it, you know, make it may turn it into English, or at least bring it up, that's probably a bit too cynical, bring out the salient points, extract some interesting data points and present it to people so that the conversation gets better. Because far too much of the conversation is driven by assumptions and by commercially led polls. You know, because I think the one of the things we get, you know, when we get the studies in, we get the occasional academic study. And I mean, we're on the radar of a few sort of academic institutions, that sort of presents us with interesting stuff, but on the whole, the bulk of what we get in his commercial, so it's polls, and they don't present their methodology to you, they might tell you the last 1,000 people, or 2,000 people or whatever, what they don't do is tell you exactly the question they've asked, because I just think I've got to be careful, I'm not misrepresenting what the researchers are saying here. You know, because some of these things are obviously very involved sometimes, as we know, you know, a lot of research has to, you know, be presented with caveats, and so on and so forth. And so I'm circumspect about doing that. Sometimes, it’s easy, I mean, I think, you know, the case I cited recently, was Microsoft doing a survey of 61,000 workers globally. And talking about the loss of weak ties in the workplace, and what that the consequences of that for the development of projects and products and so on. So it was very honest for Microsoft to admit that they had a problem, for example. So that's, that's refreshing. But and perhaps because it was Microsoft, as well, it was presented in a way that was more digestible. So that's the kind of thing that I think would be really useful.
Ian Ellison
So what recent workplace research has really stood out to you is interesting, Mark?
Mark Eltringham
Well, I think, I mean, one person I was mentioned is Ben Waber, who we interviewed him for the magazine, two or three issues ago. And Ben's interesting because he's an academic. So he's background is MIT. And, but he's also got a tech firm. But he's prepared, like, you know, the best people are to argue, or to, perhaps to absorb points that don't support his business model. So you know, he's, but and he has got that academic brain of suggesting, actually, you know, when we make these claims, we have to caveat them, you know, and he's another one, he's done research on weak ties we put which published, I think, in the Harvard Business Review, which he looked at the Japanese gaming industry making similar points to the Microsoft one. So he's always interesting, I think, for that. And to add to that, as well, what I'd also suggest is that I think the arguments in favor of certain parts of the way people work are going to be found in other disciplines, anthropology, psychology, sociology, those sorts of fields, you know, because I think, you know, we tend to sort of look at things like productivity and wellbeing and stuff like that, which are very workplace specific.
--Matt Tucker interview--
Chris Moriarty
I think what's really interesting when reflecting on that is looking at work that I've done in the past and how the role of marketing teams has led to some of the challenges that Mark spoke about, there's been a definite shift in how brands engage with their audiences with a significant move towards content rather than the broadcasting of messages. And I think that's ultimately a good thing because it reshapes the type of relationship organisations have with their audiences, one that could add more value, but it will be the reason that Mark receives so many formulaic 8/10 cats say type press releases in his inbox, so it's becoming quite noisy space. So what of the world of academia? What opportunity lies there? And why don't we see more of it on our news feeds? For that we go to Dr. Matt Tucker.
Chris Moriarty
Matt, welcome to the Workplace Geeks podcast. Can you just give us a little bit of background on your work, your role at the minute, and then we'll dive into some of your thoughts about workplace research.
Matt Tucker
Hi, guys. So my name is Matt Tucker. I am a reader in Workplace and Facilities Management at Liverpool John Moores University.
Chris Moriarty
Now Matt, in the past you and I have had a chat generally about academic research and its difficulty and breaking through to practice or to people in practice. So just talk to me a little bit about those frustrations.
Matt Tucker
I would say there is a frustration with a lot of really, really good credible robust academic research that is undertaken that never sees the light of day. And when we say never seen sees the light of day, I mean to the general public. Yeah, it does see the light of day within an academic audience in students that are being taught and there are buzzwords that we talk about within academia, like research-inform teaching. And that's, that's looked at as an element of good practice, if you can take your own research and embed it into your teaching, it's all within that academic system, isn't it? And it's how you get that system to talk to another system. And that's probably where there's been a gap in the past. A lot of it is perhaps about terminology, and depth of research and length, you know, people can't afford to be reading a 24 page scientific journal article, but is there an alternative for them, unless you know, certain resources that you can tap into, then you're just going to bypass it, aren't you? And it will never see the light of day. So that's where I'm coming from in terms of frustration. What I would say, though, is within academia times are changing, the system is very much rolling, and it is forcing people to change. And one thing within academia that we've always had is something called the research excellence framework called ref. It's like the World Cup of researchers. So each institution would be ranked based on their research, credibility and quality. And historically, that's been about academic journal papers and outputs. More recent research excellence framework criteria has brought in this component of impact. That's basically the effect isn’t it. The effect on society, economy, quality of life, health, you name it, how can you evidence that you generated that impact? So the tides are starting to turn a little bit, and we're starting to see people start to branch out and not just look, you know, through that very narrow lens that I need to get this journal paper published, and I want it to be cited by other academics. And now thinking about this broader impact that their research can have,
Ian Ellison
Do you see the sort of impact focus in recent years as the bit that helps us bridge the gap from academic research to real world utility, almost?
Matt Tucker
I genuinely feel this will be a game changer for academia, I genuinely think it will because, It's forcing people to think about how they produce research more. I call it parallel dissemination. I'm not now just thinking about publishing in a high ranked academic journal, I'm now thinking, well, I do want to do that, because I do work in academia, so I have to hit certain KPIs that match what these academic institutions are looking for. But I also want to produce impact for the university. And I do have, I do actually want to interact with industry because that's what gives me a buzz. You know, I don't want to produce some blue-sky research, which never goes anywhere I want to apply it in practice.
Chris Moriarty
Matt, can I ask you about the return on workplace investment project that you've recently done with the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management, because I was I was close to that project and a previous role. And whilst you were doing that work, what I was struck with was this, just the sheer breadth of research that you were looking at, I mean, it was a lot of papers, but just the sort of breadth and where these research papers were coming from, it wasn't from the sort of traditional areas that we would look for kind of workplace performance type research, it was coming from all sorts of different schools of thought. So just reflect a little bit on both the breadth and the variety, I guess, of the research that you uncovered as part of that project?
Matt Tucker
Yeah, so in a nutshell, to be able to create this, this tool for IWFM. It's all grounded in existing academic literature. And I probably sound like I've given academia a bit of a bad rap for this, what I've said during this podcast, but actually, let's flip it the other way, I think what industry can learn from academia, there is a wealth an absolute wealth of credible research that is done. And the reason why I'm an academic and why I do this stuff is because I value that credibility. Nothing is published based on its political skew. It's published based on whether it's good enough. And it's that simple, you know, does it have quality, everything is peer reviewed, double blind peer reviews, for example. You know, that is what gives it gives it its value and its weight. So with this particular project, we utilised that strength. And we, I think we get we put simple searches in you know, ‘workplace’ and ‘investment’ and whatever it might be key terms that would be applicable to this project. And, you know, spat out something like 9,000 articles that would be applicable to us. And then we had to go through a process of exclusions and whittling it down. So you have to have that, that, you know, you need those, you need somebody with those research skills, who he knows what databases to tap into. And B they know, strategies to use to actually limit that search down to get to something which is manageable, and applicable. And I think that's what you're saying, there's so much out there, is that its own worst enemy in a way, there is so much. And yeah, you're right, you do need to have those research skills to be able to get to stuff, which is important to your research.
Chris Moriarty
One of the kind of lightbulb moments for me with research like this. And I guess it talks back to something you mentioned earlier on, which is that this is good research, and we've got to demonstrate it’s good research. But that for me, who's someone who's a quick reader of things, that kind of painful process, you go through at the start of a paper where it's outline the methodology, and it's telling you about this, and it's, it's boring for the reader, because they like, you know, get through this. What's the what's the headline here, and I know that there's some tools like abstracts and exec summaries that try and get round that. But still, you still want to get into some of the data is that that this gets in the way. But within that is the inherent strength of these papers, which is we've taken, these references aren't here, because that's a process these references are here, because this is the science we've built our arguments on, which by the way, have all been peer reviewed, and are really solid and all the rest of it. Now we're going to do our bit, but it's almost like this sort of knowledge wall where everyone gets their own brick, and they can just come up and slap a bit of mortar down and pop their bit on. And each time It just strengthens. And guess what you're saying is that a tool like this, and it's not really about the tool, but it's about the process is that as new research comes in, it's just gonna keep strengthening ideas like that. Because we know the process, we know you've been through peer review, or whatever it might be. We trust this as it comes in, we're just going to get on with looking at what it found. And I think that's quite exciting. But I think there's a lot of people out there that will be listening to this who kind of know some of the stuff we're talking about. And they've heard some of the stuff we're talking about. But ultimately, they don't feel and we've Ian used the word accessible, it doesn't feel really accessible. If I need to put my hand on something and quickly go and tell the boss, this is how we're going to do it because…
Matt Tucker
And that accessibility is not mainstream. And until it becomes mainstream, then it's only going to be a minority of people that can ever see it. And that's our problems. Podcasts like this are really, really important to try and bridge that gap.
--Pinder Ponder--
Chris Moriarty
Okay, so that's our first two interviews done. So next, we head over to Dr. James Pinder for what will become our regular Pinder Ponder, for his reflections on what we've just heard.
Chris Moriarty
Hi, James, I hope we haven't dragged you away from something important, but Ian and I wonder whether you can share some of your reflections following our chat with Mark and Matt
James Pinder
Go on then, if I must.
Chris Moriarty
What did you take away from those interviews?
James Pinder
Yeah, it's interesting, because I thought Mark’s was a more pessimistic viewpoint. And Matt's more optimistic, I'd say, Mark’s is a more realistic viewpoint. Whereas you could argue Matt’s may be a bit unfoundedly optimistic.
Chris Moriarty
Do you think that's, do you think that's because, and this is what I was wondering when I was talking to Mark and Matt, is that Matt's, and I don't think we're doing a disservice here. But he's kind of, his work and his world exists in the bubble. So he's kind of, the influences are within an environment that he understands really well with Mark’s kind of at the there's kind of gritty, cutting edge of this or where research meets the reality of practice and people's lives. And therefore he's a bit more real, like real about, actually, it's all well and good, but
James Pinder
But people's in this, there's different incentives aren't there as well. So in academia, as Matt talked about, there's the REF, and that's a key driver for why academics are a lot of academics and certainly those involved in research to what they do. They might be interested in it. But there's also there is an incentive there, an incentive system in in, in academia, whereas things Mark was talking about so those vested interests in tech and property and these commercial polls that he gets sent all the time. There's an incentive there isn't there's a motive there. So it's just different, different incentives, different parts of the ecosystem, and they've got different things driving what they're doing everything. As Mark said, I guess it that does distort how things happen.
Chris Moriarty
Do you think people are aware of that? Because I one thing that. I guess the problem with all of this is if the person absorbing this and desperate to absorb it, and trying desperately to work out, what on Earth is going on? Are they going to pause and go? What are the vested interest in that? What system? Is that coming from? Do I you know, that's that's essentially the skill? I guess that's missing from this whole scenario?
James Pinder
Yeah, I think well, that's that's about critical thinking, isn't it? But I think there's another aspect which cropped up in both well, particularly in Matt’s, which is about accessibility, but it cropped up in both conversations. And there are arguably academic research has become more accessible over the last few decades because of the internet and things like Google Scholar and actually a push for, from research funders to make their the research they funded, publicly available and not necessarily sat behind paywalls. But a lot of academic research is still sat behind paywalls, or it's in a form that's not particularly accessible.
Ian Ellison
The theme for me that bridged the two conversation was the access and the accessibility. Access in the sense that you were talking about it, James, being able to get at the stuff. Whereas traditionally, maybe some of the real deep research has been just because of the way the whole thing is structured behind these paywalls. There's definitely a thing about it being more available, but accessibility in the other sense of the stuff that I guess it links to what Matt was talking around around impact, helping people understand so that they can make more use of it. And Mark was crying out for it. And Matt was saying we're working on it. And I could see, I could see the worlds united or I could see that being an opportunity for these two different worlds of business and academia to unite. But maybe that needs help.
James Pinder
It does. And also, you know, again, it comes back to motivators, doesn't it? So there are motives and incentives for academics to publish academic papers, journal papers, but maybe less so to go to the likes of Mark's publication and publish in that, even though it will probably get far more widely read by a magnitude of Lord knows how many, it will be far more widely read. And we reach a much wider audience and maybe actually influence practice. But actually, if their incentives or the motives aren't there, maybe to do that, then maybe that doesn't happen. Maybe it should happen more, but maybe it doesn't happen as much as it should do. I think the other thing about accessibility also is about the way that the content is produced and written up and delivered isn’t it. You know, we've all read papers, academic papers, that actually because of the, you know, the conventions in academic publications can make them quite difficult to to they're not always an easy read, are they?
Ian Ellison
I think that would be a minor understatement, to be fair.
Chris Moriarty
Please reference my earlier point about boring. I think the word we're looking for is that makes it quite boring. Oh, turgid, turgid’s a word? You know, it did really well. Let's use that.
Ian Ellison
I view that as a personal challenge, though, Chris, I am going to make you during the course of our conversations come to love every part of that academic papers as long as they're written well, and they're accessible, right? But that whole thing you were saying about, I just want the results. I just want the findings. I just want the hot takes as you call them. It's like, well, that's one thing. But there's actual, when you really understand so you can start to spot what's going on, there's some incredible insights to be have about why people are deciding to do the things the way they've decided to do them and what ethical things that they've wrestled with and how they see the world and what how that influences the way they've designed the study. We can, I mean, this is why we Workplace Geeks, right? We can properly geek out about this stuff as we go.
James Pinder
Chris I think you've just lost a chunk of your academic listeners during the first episode. Don't insult any other audience groups.
The other thing to ponder also there is I mean, we talked about this previously but, I guess how much investment in research in the areas of workplace that we that we're aware of? Is it is it a well-funded? Is it an attractive topic for funders? I do I mean maybe this is something to come back to another time but there's probably a lot of research that's done within organisations you know bespoke research in the form of consultancy, some good some bad, that's probably generates lots of insights that never sees the light of day, but actually is as a as an area for sort of funding from research councils and the like, Is it is it actually underfunded I guess, is it is it an attractive area? Is it sexy from a from a research council point of view?
The other thing I thought the point that resonated with me that Mark made was about other disciplines looking outside of workplace. And that's something I guess, Ian and I've always been really passionate about when we're doing learning and development and, you know, writing guidance notes and, and whatever else, or just, you know, just generally in terms of consultancy. And again, I think disciplines can be very insular, can't they an inward looking and I think looking beyond your own particular area is really important. Because there you can learn so much from that, and also applying different methodologies. You know, the one I always go back to is Intel, you know, 20 years ago, whatever it was employed anthropologists, because they wanted to understand how people in their homes use the technology or what they needed from technology, even though Intel, you might think with two steps removed from the devices, surely it's Apple, or whoever makes the actual unit. But Intel wanted to know, what, what, what are the use cases, what were people wanting to achieve? So they actually employed an anthropologist or anthropologists to sort of understand that better. So again, you know, taking a different sort of methodological stance on trying to understand something.
Ian Ellison
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I, I sensed that in both conversations, actually, Mark was calling for it directly, you know, having finding real interest in the sort of the psychological stuff, the anthropological stuff, all of the because he was, do you remember Chris, when he talked about, it's actually his version of the workplace when people, places and technology, he said, it's always the people stuff that I'm most interested in? Because that's, that's where all the action happens. And that's, that's where you get all the clever sort of thoughts and whatnot. And I also heard that in Matt stuff, when he was talking about the ROWI, the Return on Workplace Investment work, the literature view, he'd said, you know, we found stuff in all of these different disciplines. So I think you're absolutely right, James, deliberately seeking to get beyond your boundaries, recognising that your boundary is there. In some respects, it links to critical thinking, which I think we should come back to, because we mentioned what vested interests early and we haven't explored that yet. But actually recognising you've got a boundary, and then going beyond the boundary, and saying, what else can we learn about this? And how does it change the way we see things? It couldn't be more critical right now.
Chris Moriarty
Mark’s, obviously, whether that strapline is trying to appeal to a broader audience, but there is a there is a challenge within all of that, if you think about the media industry, is that, let's say there's a particular professional tribe that have a particular landscape that they care about, and there will be a piece of trade press that will service that landscape. And then the organisation's wants to sell to the the attention that that press has generated. So it ends up becoming kind of self-fulfilling model in that you're only going to talk to that group about the things that they want to hear. Therefore, they're only going to hear about what they already know about and make incremental differences. Whereas I guess what we're saying here is that on an academic level, someone like Matt can throw the net far and wide and pull in ideas and insights from different disciplines. But there's a challenge within the media cycle, is that are you going to see a piece of research showcased in an HR magazine title, that is very much about the bricks and mortar of a building. And if you are how often you're going to see that so that kind of, that's where people go, they're not going into journals and looking at different types of research, they go into their recognised industry press, and that's just serving them up the stuff they've already seen, but with a slightly different flavor from what it was last month,
Ian Ellison
Which might be part of how it's all wired up at the moment. But that's where I can get quite excited about Matt's positivity about parallel dissemination and the role of vehicles like this, our Workplace Geeks podcast, to play a role in that, right, because we can this is a new avenue, this is a much more accessible, much more democratic way of sharing knowledge, new knowledge, existing knowledge, but and bridging the gaps and deliberately declaring that we're doing that and almost showing people how we're joining the dots and why. I mean, that's, that's exciting, right? That's something that really does appeal to me for why we should embark on this journey.
James Pinder
Two of the things that stood out in Mark's conversation for me, but one of them was around, we already know a lot of stuff about there. So the knowledge is out there. And in some respects, we've lost some of that or what we think is new knowledge actually isn't always necessarily new knowledge that I thought that was, you know, again, really resonated with me.
Chris Moriarty
Do you think that's a kind of a obsession, I think is what how Mark kind of described it. There's almost like an obsession that we've got to have new stuff. We can't just, we can't just reinterpret old stuff or reviewer get we've, we need something fresh otherwise it's not going to run.
Ian Ellison
I think there's two things in this, I think there's the need to be in that sort of thought leadership space, the need to show progress because it makes you more attractive normally, because it's linked to some sort of content marketing. And I think the other thing that goes with this, and it is a bit cheeky, but you know, put it out there is not doing your homework. Because when you think you've got something, something profound and new, and that's going to really help people. It's also quite disheartening, when you discover that Frank Duffy probably thought about it in the late 80s, and probably wrote a book about it, because he did most things like that. So, you know, one of the things that we get to do here, I think, is to sort of just in a not, in a really positive way, go back in time and acknowledge some of that learning, James, that you're saying is already there, and we've got to draw upon.
James Pinder
And then Mark’s, so the point was around, there's almost so much stuff and data out there now, you know, it's very data led, it's easy to generate through surveys or whatever. And actually, that creates another problem, doesn’t it, you know, not being able to see the wood for the trees? Because arguably, the problem now is that there's so much stuff out there, what how do you know what's the good stuff and what's less good? And I think that's a bit that's potentially a problem for practitioners who are busy and have limited time to sort of go back to that maybe the original research or the research that underpins a bit, maybe an article in a in a, in a magazine or something like that.
Ian Ellison
So can we take this away? For me, that is another point, you started the conversation, James around the sort of piece around vested interests, different parts of the arena, parts of the workplace industry, wanting to focus on certain things for certain reasons. And the last bit you said, was about there being so much stuff out there. How do you discern how do you sort the wheat from the chaff, all roads for me lead to critical thinking. So whether you like it or not, you're going to get my two favorite quotes about critical thinking now. The first one, the first one is understanding that nothing is ever said without reason. And I wish I knew who said that, I'll have heard it on a podcast somewhere some super brainy, clever podcast, whilst I was driving and promised myself I'd write it down. And I've forgotten but understanding that nothing is ever said without reason. So that really talks to the vested interests piece. And the other one, which I know where this come from, this is from my friend, Max, who teaches English as a foreign language out in Japan, making sure that we've got good reasons for our beliefs. So knowing why we believe something rather than just believing it, what is it that makes us thinking about thinking, believe it, those two things for me are worth their weight in gold. And if we can, through a journey of discovery start to sort of look at that from different angles and show other people it's important. It's just, you know, it's absolutely worth doing.
Chris Moriarty
It kind of feels to me, at some stage, we're going to be adding to our Workplace Geeks five commandments, and detailing the, what makes a workplace geek. And that, you know, one of the will be someone who thinks critically and knows what, what they're saying, you know, or your whatever the that quote is, that that knows why they're saying something, and what makes them believe that that's kind of like a, that's what we're about, right? You know, we can't, there's enough, there's enough hot air, I think where I you know, my very stupid, simple take on both of these is that there's like from Matt, there's some really cracking stuff out there, and it's just buried a little bit, so we just need to get a shovel out and get stuck into it. But from Mark is that there's a lot of hot air out there as well. And if we get distracted by the hot air, we're not going to be going rooting around and digging for the the real gold that's under the surface. So we've somehow got to shift our attention.
James Pinder
Not enough metaphors there Chris, you are mixing them and doing everything with them, blending
Ian Ellison
Metaphor mashup.
--OUTRO--
Chris Moriarty
So that brings us to the end of episode one. And to reference a point Ian made right at the start. We're on a journey, and we've just taken our first step. But before we go, some housekeeping. Firstly, if you have any thoughts or views, or you just want to say hi, you can email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org Or you can find Ian an I very easily on things like LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you've got any ideas about any research that you think we should look at, please remember the five workplace geeks commandments. It’s got to be evidence based not opinion. We want to talk to the research teams direct. We want to learn together deliberately/. Take different perspectives as we explore the broad church that is workplace. See you next time.
