In conversation with Lizzie Penny & Alex Hirst, CEOs and Founders of Hoxby and Authors of ‘Workstyle: a revolution for wellbeing, productivity and society.’ talking about how workstyle is more important for productivity than any other current organisational psychology, if flexible working is missing the point and how progressive organisations achieve culture at scale.

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Please note that this transcript is auto-generated from the audio file through Rev - Humans Working Side By Side With The Best Speech-to-Text AI. We believe this to be a good representation of the conversation, but it isn’t checked word-for-word and therefore isn’t 100% accurate.

Matt Meyer (00:00):

Alex, Lizzie. Wonderful to see you both again, and welcome back to Zebra Talk. You have been long term friends of The Zebra Project and supporters of Zebra Talk , so really good to see you again. I can't believe how long it's been. I think so much has happened since we last spoke and perhaps I can feed in some of our conversation today, not least a global pandemic and a book from you two great authors. So I'm keen to talk about both of those things, so welcome back.

Lizzie Penny(00:25):

Thank you for having us.

Alex Hirst (00:26):

Thanks for having us Matt. I'm not sure we would class ourselves as authors, but we have written a book and we're talking about it.

Matt Meyer (00:35):

I've decided that authoring is a process rather than a publishing outcome. So I think if you've been through the process of writing a book, and perhaps we can talk a bit about that too, then you’re definitely authors in my book. So look, Hoxby is your business. It's a fascinating business. And I suspect it's a business that has never had its moment more than in recent times. So I'm really keen to talk about Hoxby as a business and some of the philosophy behind that as well as what you guys have been up to personally over the last couple of years. So I guess the starting point is perhaps just to give us a flavour of what Hoxby is and what you're doing with the business.

Alex Hirst (01:09):

I'll start if that's okay, Lizzie, I'll just start by saying that first and foremost Hoxby is a diverse community of around about 600 freelancers all around the world. And they are firstly some of the nicest people that you'll ever meet, they are people who want to work, in their own way, and have taken steps to make that happen. So they have their own work style as we call it, which means that they're free to choose when and where they work for themselves.

Matt Meyer (01:41):

So work style, definitely a concept we'll come back to.

Lizzie Penny (01:45):

I would add as well that Hoxby in terms of structure is a decentralized autonomous organization, but we created it as such before that terminology existed. That's something post-pandemic that we've heard a lot of people talking about. And we think we might be one of the only organizations that have been operating that way for eight years, because it's something that, what we've seen since the pandemic is certainly a change in attitudes towards the norms of when and where you work and work style as an experimental approach. We set Hoxby up as a social enterprise and also a B Corp, but specifically to learn from working this way. But we also do work with big clients. You know, we work with Unilever, AIA, Merck, Amazon, some of the biggest businesses in the world. So we are working with our incredible team of freelancers to prove that this can work, can be done differently and that it works for everyone.

Matt Meyer (02:41):

So I love the idea that it's an experiment and I think that is a characteristic that I hope to see more of in organizations of the future. It's really important. I've always sensed that Hoxby isn't a religion, it's more of a philosophy and an experiment. And I think that has allowed you to adapt and evolve. What I would say though, is it was incredibly brave to have, effectively, a start-up organization that was intended to be global from day one and not only was decentralized, but also had a different model of employment or non-employment for the people. So hats off to your courage, did you ever imagine it would look like it does today?

Lizzie Penny (03:17):

I think it looks not dissimilar from how we thought it would look, actually, I don’t know if you agree, Alex? I think it has become the organization we set out to create, but I don't think we realized just how powerful it would be in terms of the impact it could have on individual lives. And also in terms of the output that we can uniquely get to that other organizations can't by bringing together diverse individuals and creating a level of collective intelligence that you couldn't get otherwise. So I think it is what we thought it would be, but we've learned a lot along the way. Certainly I found it more inspiring and powerful as an organizational model than I thought possible.

Matt Meyer:

You mentioned there about the impact that it has on people's lives, or potentially it does. I mean, having said it's not a religion, it's clearly a business that has a strong sense of purpose, and there were some key drivers for you in experimenting with this model. Perhaps just give us a flavour for what those drivers were and what drives you now eight years on.

Alex Hirst (04:22):

I think that's probably the thing that's kept it culturally true to its origins for us. We always wanted to create an environment where people felt included, where there wasn't bias and where that freedom to choose when and where you work enabled you to be your authentic self and do your best work. For us personally, well for me, that was about initially trying to come up with a solution to why I reached burnout, which was about presence and feeling the need to be visible 60 hours a week. And work style really was sort of the antidote to that in my view. But as Lizzie said, it's impacted lots of different people in different ways, but fundamentally what's universally true is that it's enabled people to access work on their own terms. And that's what's been transformative for everybody who's been able to do it.

Lizzie Penny (05:10):

We've always also had a clear purpose that we exist to create a happier, more fulfilled society through a world of work without bias. That was our purpose on day one. That's still our purpose now, eight years later, that's in the, you know, opening pages of the book, everything we do is in pursuit of that. And I think if you asked any Hoxby, why we're all here, that's what they would say. And, you know, we say that a lot. But I think it's really important to know what we are and to keep saying it over and over again so that we're all really clear on why we're here, not just what we're doing.

Matt Meyer (05:46):

The new book is called Work Style?

Lizzie Penny (05:48):

It is. Yeah.

Matt Meyer (05:49):

Let's go back to basics, and perhaps let's maybe just go a little bit deeper on what work style means both as a concept and in terms of what it means at a practical level and how you live and breathe that in Hoxby.

Alex Hirst (06:00):

When Lizzie and I were talking many moons ago, what feels like a long time ago, about our respective issues with the traditional work system. What we came to discover and came to realize was what we wanted was the ability to be free to choose when and where we work for ourselves and therefore were judged on our output and the outcomes of our work rather than our presence and the number of hours we were putting in. So output not input. The challenge is that there's an assumption that work is done between Monday and Friday and 9 to 5 broadly speaking. And if you don't fit into that assumption, then you are different. You’re a-typical in some way. And what we wanted to do was create a new language for work that reversed that, that actually meant if you were choosing for yourself when and where you worked, then that's the assumption.

And that's why we need a work style to give everybody the language to say: ‘well my work style is I work when my children are at school. And sometimes that means I work in the evening when they're in bed, but I'm okay with that because I get to take them to school. I get to pick them up and spend time with them while they're awake.’ So it's about individual preference, individual choice, but having a language to describe it, that isn't loaded with prejudice in the same way as being part-time or working some sort of variation on the generally accepted full-time employment.

Lizzie Penny (07:20):

And what the book does is it essentially summarizes the case for work style and lays out why work style can create a revolution at work. And that encompasses why the time for change is now, why flexible working is our nemesis as we say, which is quite a surprise to some people, but also why or how work style can transform society in terms of inclusion, but also well-being and productivity for the individual. So it kind of lays out all of those things and provides both a robust case for illustrating why, but also draws on personal stories that for us have been the thing that have kind of fuelled us on this journey.

Matt Meyer (08:02):

I think having had the joy of reading the book, what I loved about it was it was very practical. It was very grounded in experience. And I think so many leaders and organizations who are trying to do things differently, whether it's in the space of work style and arrangements or other areas, just find it very difficult to operationalize the ideas and beliefs that they've got. And I think the book is a fantastic insight into how to do that, grounded in your own experience rather than in some sort of academic concept. So it's absolutely fantastic. Talk to me a little bit more about flexible working and why that's a nemesis.

Lizzie Penny (08:36):

The thing about flexible working is any progress is good progress, but we also need to recognize the limitations of flexible working. And the challenge with it is that many organizations feel that having a flexible working policy or having some people working flexibly ticks that box - that they're doing something and that that ultimately means they're an inclusive organization. And in the book we talk about seven excluded groups. There are many, many groups who are discriminated within society, but there are seven groups who are structurally excluded from work. When we work 9 to 5, five days a week, some of those groups, or most of those groups are not positively impacted by flexible working - those with neurodiversity, for example, flexible working is not the answer for them - they want to work when and where it suits them. And the same with carers, for example, those caring for elderly relatives or those with disabilities, also those with physical disabilities, this isn't just about working from home on a Friday or coming in an hour later, or leaving an hour early. We're at a tipping point in the progress of the digital age where we can now choose when and where we work with true autonomy. And what that does is it creates a level playing field for those excluded groups in a way that hasn't been possible previously. And so for us, this isn't an extension of flexible working because ultimately what that does is just flexes around the industrial age-thinking, 200 year old, 9 to 5 day, this is something truly different. And it's about autonomy.

Matt Meyer (10:09):

I mean, I say this with heavy irony as a lawyer, but I think anything that can be reduced to a policy definitely is a red flag in terms of meaningful cultural and organizational change.

Alex Hirst (10:21):

In organizations as well, where you have flexible workers and non-flexible workers, you effectively create a cultural division between those who do, and those who don't work a certain way. So we talk about this a little bit in the book about how you create in-group, out-group dynamics. You effectively create two camps, which isn't good for cultural unity, and is another reason why having a word like work style can bring equity to an organization's culture whereby everybody has the same opportunity to choose for themselves when and where they work. So that's something to look out for within an organization as well beyond the sort of broader systemic point.

Lizzie Penny (11:02):

I have personal experience from that, working in an organization. When I worked three days a week, I always felt like I missed the most fun stuff: the Eurovision sweepstake, or the foosball final or whatever it was. And I didn't miss all the important stuff. It just felt like I did. So this isn't necessarily about purposeful in-group, out-group dynamics. It's not about maliciousness. It's just a fact of life that in-group, out-group dynamics are created by treating a minority differently from the majority. Whereas we are talking about changing the way we work for everyone. So that nobody's in that minority.

Matt Meyer (11:39):

I was in a conversation earlier in the week about returning to the office, which is a hot topic in professional services. The conversation was about whether there was a sense of kind of FOMO that would draw people back into the office. I say that as a negative, but it's interesting. I am seeing that. I mean, I'm not justifying that, but I'm definitely seeing that dynamic of feeling excluded rather than being included is a different kind of thing.

Lizzie Penny (12:06):

I think that's very relevant. And we actually think that hybrid working is the new flexible working in that it's still setting a structure. It's still not giving people the autonomy to choose. And it still creates in-group, out-group dynamics because people who can't fit with the formalized structure that may be set by hybrid working, you know, be that in the office on a Tuesday and a Thursday or work from home on a Friday, they feel excluded. And one of the things we said early on about Hoxby was we are only ever going to be fully remote and Slack is our office because then everyone can access it on their terms and a time that suits them. And for us, the combination of technology that we have is really important because that's what defines us. It's both efficient and effective in terms of how we work, but it's also our culture. And it means that our culture has to live in that platform because there is no office to have informal conversations that otherwise people could be excluded from.

Alex Hirst (13:06):

There's a point that I'd like to draw out on there. That from what Lizzie said as well, which is around autonomy. So if you are mandating that people need to work certain hours from a certain place, whether that's flexible, hybrid or traditional 9 to 5, it's not autonomy because the individual doesn't have that freedom to decide it for themselves. Work style enables autonomy. And the research that we've conducted within Hoxby over the last four years proves that autonomy is better for productivity. So autonomy increases productivity. There's lots of research that substantiates that. But what we also found was that it is because it increases well-being, that it improves productivity as well. And this is something that we cover in the book in some detail, the findings from Hoxby, but for as long as you are not enabling that autonomy, you are not getting the benefits of wellbeing and therefore the impact of increased productivity that you might.

Matt Meyer (14:05):

It's really interesting, because certainly the narrative during lockdown-induced working from home was that yes, there was a productivity balance, but it was a productivity balance that came from not being distracted by the ills of the office. And I actually think what we're seeing now in the return-to-work environment is exactly your point, which is that the autonomous decision making creates a freedom that has a positive impact on productivity and sustainable productivity. So, it isn't just a case of ‘I've got an extra three hours back in a day because I don't have to commute’. It's actually, ‘I want to work in a way that I didn't when I was in an office’ or when I was required or to your point about flexibility when the only flexibility I had was to flex around a norm, there was a defined norm.

Lizzie Penny (14:48):

I think there's no question as well, that in the pandemic, whilst productivity gains were made, well-being did not correlate with that. Again, we reference in the book how the experiment of working from home during the pandemic is not at all comparable to Work Style because none of us were autonomous. You know, we weren't allowed to leave the house - no one was, for periods of time. So it isn't just about working from home. This is about choosing when and where you work. And for some people that's working in a co-working space, surrounded by other people, because that's where they get energy from. And even individual people might choose different places to work for different types of work in order to be at their most productive. And that's where I think you really realize the well-being gains and the productivity gains. Whereas the pandemic, I know from homeschooling kids at the same time as working from home - it was a grand experiment, but that particular experiment was not one that we would obviously want to replicate.

Matt Meyer (15:48):

I guess the positives that have come from the pandemic experiences that we've perhaps experimented on a mass scale about working asynchronously. And as you pointed out, the technology has been, yeah, I think the technology was available, but the technology's been tested and trusted in a way that it wasn't previously.

Alex Hirst (16:05):

And the technology benefited from an acceleration during that time, as well during the pandemic, you know, the increased numbers of people using the platforms and therefore the increased revenues to go into developing it and accelerating it has been phenomenal. And one of the silver linings, no doubt, we think of the pandemic as a catalyst, really a moment in history that enabled people to see on mass a new potential, not necessarily to believe that it is the right thing right here, right now - there are lots of questions, but it's opened more eyes to what might be possible in the future than we would've otherwise been able to, or certainly would've taken us probably another 10 years to get to that through the Work Style revolution and other means.

Matt Meyer (16:50):

It seems to me that the missed opportunity that we're living at the moment is, and perhaps this is where work style is differentiated much more clearly from hybrid working, is that we're trying to encourage people and organizations to adopt approaches and policies forever. Let's commit to: ‘I'm going to be in the office these days a week’, or ‘let's have a organizational policy that requires attendance/anchor days for particular teams rather than encourages them’. And for me, that's a missed opportunity that Work Style gets around because essentially it's a dynamic thing. I mean, you might want to, your work style can change from day-to-day, week-to-week, and you have that autonomy to do that.

Lizzie Penny (17:27):

And our lives do change - all of our lives change. I know that personally, I co-founded Hoxby with Alex because of having young children and wanted to work flexibly around them. Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed to work differently to accommodate that. And now there's some illness in my close family, and so I have some caring responsibilities and need to work around that, and even if you have none of those elements, we're all getting older. So aging will ultimately affect everyone. So for us, I think it is the recognition that not only does life always change, but there's also an intersectionality between those different aspects of our lives. I didn't stop being a parent when I was also being treated for an illness, I just needed to accommodate parenting and illness. And so I think it's recognition that We are all multifaceted. We all have different daily challenges in our lives and work should fit around them rather than them having to fit around work.

Matt Meyer (18:28):

And, and the constant in that environment is your commitment and your energy for the business that you're doing, or the work that you're doing, not the routine or the behavior that you have around that.

Lizzie Penny (18:38):

I agree with that. And I think that if it can be, if you can work in a work style way, then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because it helps you maintain your commitment and energy for it. Which I think for me was really valuable. Not only did I have the opportunity to work in a way that suited me, but I also had the pleasure of escaping into work at a time that mentally was the best fit for me. So yeah, I mean, it's an incredible way to work, what can I say.

Alex Hirst (19:06):

Like you talked about, Matt, about the adoption of asynchronous working practices during the pandemic, that is one element of this, but one of the big challenges for people in the workplace, I think as autonomy becomes more and more the normal, the expected way of working is knowing how to do that and do it well. We are all conditioned to do a job under traditional employment terms, so learning how to be an autonomous worker is a skill that people are going to have to learn, and we hope that Work Style, the book gives people the tools they need right now, but we're at the start of this learning journey as well. We've been doing synchronous work for hundreds of years and we've become really good at it and really conditioned by it. But we have an opportunity to do something different now, work in a different way that can perhaps improve our well-being and our productivity, be more inclusive and create more diverse organizations that are collectively more intelligent and may be able to solve problems better than organizations of the past with their traditional hierarchies. There's lots of potential, but also lots to learn and, and lots to evolve along the way before we can get there.

Matt Meyer (20:28):

So the book is definitely the deep dive in terms of the answer to the question I'm about to ask, but how do you do culture, organizational culture? How do you do organizational philosophy at scale, which I actually think work style's part of, but you've found it in running an enormous organization. And you've managed to maintain that culture and philosophy and commitment to work style throughout. How do you do that at a practical level?

Lizzie Penny (20:52):

One of the things is that early on, very early on, way pre-pandemic, we learned three lessons in the Hoxby experiment. The first one was that work needed to be done asynchronously, not synchronously. And that was before those words were created. The second was that we all need to adopt a digital-first mentality. And then the third thing is you need to have a trust-based culture to underpin working this way. For us, getting the right technology to underpin those three things, but then making sure that Alex and I embody and deliver against the areas of trust - that enables a very different way of working. I know that you've talked on the podcast before I was listening to episode where you talked about trust and reciprocity and reciprocity is something that Alex has talked about since day one. This is a give/get model. We all gain if we can make this work. And so I think for us culturally, we have just tried to make sure that we always go back to that vision. And we always remember those three lessons in how we operate day-to-day.

Alex Hirst (21:55):

Purpose and that vision is key. And in many ways we were lucky to start a business, knowing what we knew in 2014, about the importance of purpose and having it ingrained in the decision making from day one enabled us to build a really authentic space for everybody who's been a part of Hoxby. Our purpose hasn't changed. Everything we stand for has remained the same and has informed all of the decision making that Lizzie and I have made. So in terms of being able to be trusted, ourselves, that's been absolutely key to building a community that does what it's setting out to do and makes decisions that is always in the pursuit of that purpose and always has been. And It's helped us to be authentic ourselves – we’re founders and the purpose of the business is close to our heart personally. So that's been, I think also very important. We we've been able to personally understand the purpose of Hoxby as a business and make sure that the decisions we make are decisions that Hoxbees would want us to make. And with a shared understanding of its importance.

Matt Meyer (23:04):

So purpose is a thread that runs through everything. You live in slack, slack is your office. The big question for me is: are the wheels of Hoxby still oiled by emojis?

Alex Hirst (23:15):

<laughs> Very much so.

Lizzie Penny (23:16):

Yes, they are. And you've read the book, so you've seen that we can't even write a book without finding a way to weave word-mojis throughout it. But I do think that’s important. It's about expressing yourself without needing to use the written word - finding a way to be able to express yourself and to be empowered to present how you choose in a digital environment, which is really important. And for Alex and I, one of the consulting services that we offer is around virtual leadership, which obviously people are a lot more interested in since the pandemic. That's another area where basically we've been experimenting since we started in: What is virtual leadership? It is about having the right authenticity and about being transparent with people because you don't get the casual pick stuff you get. If you're in an office, you need to choose to say things, you need to be explicit about what your values are and be really clear and how you communicate, but also you need to find other ways to bring your personality to things. And emojis is part of that.

Alex Hirst (24:17):

It may not surprise you to know Matt, that we have emojis for our values. What we always found with values within an organization is that they tended to be a single word that had some sort of extrapolated meaning, but those words tended to be sort of put up on the walls around the office environment. What we wanted to do was try and build our values into our culture day-to-day. So we have them as emojis that people use to sort of acknowledge that the value is being displayed, but also to talk about them in a, in a fun and digital-first way that that Hoxbees do. And it's actually been a really great way to bring values more into the day-to-day, which is something that we struggled with.

Lizzie Penny (24:57):

And as you probably know, Matt, you know, one of the things that founding beliefs of Hoxby for Alex and I is at work should be fun. And so a positive thing, you know, and as you'll also know, organizations, and particularly for entrepreneurs go through highs and lows, but the constant for Alex and I is that we make it fun. It's got to be fun because then you do your best work and you enjoy it while you're doing it. So.

Matt Meyer (25:22):

Absolutely, well picture speaks a thousand words, so exactly. Although my experience of emojis is that they're often used to express negative feelings as well. So we maybe have to rethink how we use emojis in the workplace.

Lizzie Penny (25:35):

But you also want to know how people are feeling. I think the other thing that we've done to maintain culture and to keep our essence as we've scaled is one of our values is always improving. And we've had over a thousand always improving suggestions from Hoxbees - anyone and everyone can and should make suggestions. We, in fact, insist that everyone makes at least one suggestion a year. Some people make many, many more than that. And it means that we are continuously improving because we are hearing from all perspectives as to how we could be better, which for us is really important. There's a place for positivity, but there's also a place for listening to feedback.

Alex Hirst (26:15):

We say we've had a thousand suggestions for how we could improve. And we always say it in a really positive way, not the fact that actually there’s more than a thousand things that are wrong, but the reason it's positive is because it actually serves as our innovation pipeline from within the business. People are telling us how we could do things better as well as probably occasionally venting about where things are wrong and need to change. It's an interesting way of thinking about innovation, having this kind of constant feed of suggested improvements, ways to do things better. And we found that that's helped us to stay agile and constantly look to improve different aspects of the business.

Matt Meyer (26:54):

Well, look, I think it's a really fantastic measure of engagement. If people are engaged enough to want to improve the organization and give some feedback, that's great. It's when you hear nothing and they leave that you start worrying. I want to just pick up Lizzie on what you said about consulting, because you reminded me that Hoxby did a fantastic series of ‘I'm going to date myself now’ webinars at the beginning of the pandemic. I think it was the beginning of the pandemic about exactly these issues. And, and I thought it was a fantastic series. And I wonder whether that had sort of spawned new business ideas for you and consulting activity and how people were taking up that kind of support.

Lizzie Penny (27:28):

Definitely. So we originally were a creative communications and marketing business predominantly in terms of the work that we delivered and we still do do a lot of that work. So you're right at the start of the pandemic we decided to basically open source the way we do everything. So we wanted to share. We realized that we knew how to do this and other organizations didn't and for well-being, we wanted to share that with everyone. So we ran a campaign called Remote Against Coronavirus, where we basically tried to just share everything that we did and we had loads and loads of interest in it and things that we thought weren't that significant, like emojis, became significant in those conversations. And so from there we are now growing our future-proofing and HR arms of our business, future-proofing is really at a kind of C-suite level, looking at organizational design and how purpose, culture and structure can play really important roles within that.

And then at an HR level more about diversity and inclusion and implementing work style - we have found of course, more people are interested in that area, but I think it's also created a shift in the way that we present Hoxby. I think we used to take an attitude of ‘we will produce the best creative campaign or the best PR across Europe for you’, ‘don't worry about how we do it because the work we produce is great.’ Whereas I think increasingly we've moved towards more of an impact focus. So the work that we do is valuable, but also has a positive impact on the world, but also the way we deliver it is different. And we're really open about that now. And I think the pandemic has given us the confidence to be open about it because we knew there were so many people that we needed to kind of engage behind it before. And some of them would be naysayers. Whereas certainly the pandemic is opened people's minds to the fact that we need to be considering working in different ways.

Matt Meyer (29:24):

Right, and if listeners are interested in how to access those services, presumably that's through the website, have a look at www.hoxby.com. So you've written a book that is no light undertaking, particularly given everything you've had going on in your lives and in your business. How was that process for you? What have you learned from that

Alex Hirst (29:42):

Challenging. And as yet, not particularly rewarding, because we haven't sold any copies – it’s not available until 13th of October. So it is a process I'm grateful to have been able to do it with Lizzie because it requires the full extraction of everything you know onto a number of pages in a document, which we did, but then we had to sort it out, agree it, debate it, hone it and then structure it into something coherent and then turn it into something that people might want to read. And that's a really challenging process, difficult - it requires a lot of brain strength, but when you've got that basic structure, and then you're looking at tone, which was one of the key pieces of feedback that our publisher gave us, which was focus on your tone of voice. Then it becomes more enjoyable. Then it becomes a bit more fun. You start to talk like a human and have fun with it. And that's the part of the process that's actually really enjoyable and that we think turns it from something that's robust in its research, in its thinking and the science, but is also an enjoyable read.

Matt Meyer (30:49):

I've read so many business books that come out of academic research that I'm much happier reading a book that comes out of a case study from the real business world. My feedback would be that it's a hugely accessible book. I think that's really, really important. That process must have unearthed something that you hadn't realized or you thought differently about after you've written about it rather than you experienced it. I'm just wondering if there's any things like that, that came out of the process.

Lizzie Penny (31:14):

I think what was interesting was that the reason we wrote the book was, post-pandemic the number of people asking us, or during the pandemic, the number of people asking us how we run Hoxby and wanting a level of detail that between us, we just couldn't talk to all the people who wanted to know it. So we thought let's put it in a book and share it with the world and hope it has a positive impact in some way. People say ‘oh, how did you split it? Did you write a chapter each?’ We wrote every word of this book together, every word – and that came with some pain because it took a lot of time, but that also meant that there was a lot of joy and laughter in it, which you can probably tell as you go through the book, because there are various jokes within it as well.

We don't take ourselves too seriously, but also it meant it was a true period of reflection on everything we've learned and everything we've done over the last eight years. And there's something really cathartic about that. At the beginning of the conversation we talked about experimentation, experimenting is amazing. You learn loads, you can try new stuff, it feels like you can change the world like that. But I think sometimes pausing for a period of reflection and being able to talk through what we've actually learned and codify it in a replicable way can be really cathartic and powerful. And certainly I think that's how it felt for us.

Alex Hirst (32:33):

There's also a lot that we just innately knew or, or had felt or experienced through, through work style and doing it for a number of years, but that we wanted to substantiate through research in the preparation of the book. So we researched a lot of stuff to evidence what we'd experienced first-hand. And that was enlightening. We learned loads about all sorts of things that we didn't know before, but we just intuitively felt were probably right. So that learning journey was incredible. And that has helped us to better understand why work style works and how it can be applied to other businesses and how it can help with diversity, but also the integration of diverse people that is very often the struggle that companies face. So it's been an education in lots of ways.

Matt Meyer (33:30):

I must say almost the perfect time to capture all of that learning and find a way to express it. My secret is that I also wrote a book during the pandemic, which will probably see the light of day next year, but I asked those questions that I asked you because I realized through the writing process that I hadn't realized how strongly I felt about some things until I tried to express them on paper, and maybe cathartic is the word, but it was almost like a journaling exercise, at a huge scale. And it gives you that opportunity to reflect. And I've come away thinking that, actually we should do more writing and journaling about our experience in organizations if we're interested. I’m not saying you have to write a book, but just get things down on paper and reflect on them and go back to them.

Lizzie Penny (34:13):

That's so true. And certainly the thing that, as Alex said, our editor really helped us with was writing in our own tone, being confident with - it turns out we think we're quite funny, but lots of people don't, but we're quite different. And we don't take ourselves too seriously. And he really gave us a confidence to write in our own tone. But also there are some elements of Work Style, the book that are quite controversial, the dismantling of flexible working, for example, that is controversial. And we had a lot of reflection about whether actually we limit progress in the world by dismantling it. But what we came back to is that's a really important thing to do in constructing the case for work style. So I think we were the same. It, it made us realize that there are some things we feel really strongly about that maybe we have a different perspective or are a bit controversial on, but that it was important that this book was something that was right for us. And I think certainly for me having had cancer, this book is in part to put out in the world our truth. And so we haven't worried too much about readers, no offence to our readers, but we've just tried to make sure that it it's true to us. And then now we eagerly await reaction to that.

Matt Meyer (35:29):

Launch October?

Lizzie Penny (35:31):

October the 13th.

Matt Meyer (35:33):

We are currently working out how we can distribute copies of your book to future members of The Zebra Project. I think it’s brilliant, so it will definitely be reaching our community through the publication of the book. So that's really exciting. It’s fantastic for us. Essentially we've been talking about progressive organizations and I think you started this or your thinking was probably more than eight years ago, but it was particularly progressive at that time. Sitting where we are today, looking forward in a sort of weird dystopia that the modern world seems to be, how would you characterize the challenges facing progressive organizations over the coming decade? What are the things that we really need to get our head around?

Alex Hirst (36:13):

Autonomy is probably the big one, in that all of the research proves that autonomy increases productivity. We found that that's true through our own research, it improves wellbeing. So if it's better for people and it's better for business and it's better for society, it feels like an inevitable part of our working future. But with it comes great deal of learning for both organizations and people systems like work style that enable it to happen. But the benefit of that for inclusivity and inclusion of diverse minds and the potential for organizations to benefit from that increased diversity is exciting. There's an exciting potential realistically, you know, a journey to, to get there that I think everybody's going to be on.

Lizzie Penny (37:03):

The big risk that we feel acutely at the moment is that post-pandemic we're in that that period of change - organizations can either change for the better, or they can go back to the way they, they worked before and hybrid is really just the way they worked before with a slightly different name. And so for us, our fear, our big fear is that this is a time when significant innovation and change could take place. And that organizations don't capitalize on that.

Matt Meyer (37:26):

We could talk for hours about this. I was having a conversation yesterday with somebody who was talking about the need for a new enlightenment in the working world. And if you look at the amount of profound change that's going on around us societally - war in Europe, end of decades of economic growth, you know, the passing of queen Elizabeth II, you know, we, we are in a period of profound change. And I think there is, you know, there is a, there's an exciting opportunity that, that willingness, that muscle, that we've developed to deal with change is interpreted positively rather than with fear. And actually we can do something really meaningful now, because it's kind of all bets are off.

Alex Hirst (38:04):

Absolutely. And People have a voice and an opportunity to make that change happen themselves and to create the future that they want. I think That's the thing that will ultimately force change – the will of the people to do things differently.

Matt Meyer (38:24):

So that probably leads me really nicely to my final question, which is in all of this exciting journey you've been on, would you do anything differently?

Lizzie Penny (38:31):

No, I don't think so because you are in it for the journey aren't you? The highs are high, the lows are low, but you know, I would say that Alex and I feel very lucky to have done it together. I honestly don't know how people write a book or start a very different business model by themselves. But I think everything we've done we've learned from, and the book helped us to understand how even some of the more challenging experiences - we learned from them. And we put that back into the business and we changed the way that we work, and now helping others to implement work style or move towards the work style end of the spectrum or run pilots. That's so gratifying. It makes it feel like we've learned from the things that we did. We did wrong along the way. So no I wouldn't do anything differently, Alex?

Alex Hirst (39:18):

I wouldn't, but hindsight's a wonderful thing. Isn't it? I mean, if we knew that we were going to have a pandemic, I think, you know, we probably would've got the book out earlier. Our vision was to try and change the world through work style. The pandemic did a lot of that for us in terms of opening people's eyes. It would've been nice to get ahead of that, but you know, as Lizzie says, the journey's been awesome and we can have no regrets.

Matt Meyer (39:43):

I'm sure the book's going to be a huge success. I don't think any of the challenges that we had three years ago, two years ago, are going away. And I think it's great that your answer is generally that you wouldn't do anything differently. Obviously the podcast listeners can't see this, but I've basically spent 47-and-a-half minutes staring at Alex and Lizzie smiling. These beaming smiles. So you are still clearly enjoying what you do. So thank you for your time today. It's been great. Great to catch up again. I wish you huge success with the book Work Style and I shall be keeping my eye on hoxby.com to see how things evolve and develop.

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