How do you deal with team members who have been trusted to deliver but are not performing to the required standard?

That is the question our Punks are debating on this episode. Should you abandon your empowering management style and come down on them like the proverbial ton of bricks? Or could there be good reasons why your staff are underperforming? We give you our usual orginal and irreverent perspectives, drawing upon our own experiences as managers, consultants and coaches.

Colin Newlyn (Decrapify Work), Ben Simpson (VitalOrg) and Paul Jansen (Trust Works) have turned into Agony Uncles, and give their irreverent, refreshing and original views on how to deal with challenges at work.
Today's episode: "The members on my team are lining up to have me make all decisions. It is driving me mad. How can I encourage them to take more decisions themselves?"

Colin Newlyn (Decrapify Work), Ben Simpson (VitalOrg) and Paul Jansen (Trust Works) have turned into Agony Uncles, and give their irreverent, refreshing and original views on how to deal with challenges at work.
This episode: How can I quickly build trust with my new team member?

Check out our latest episode of Work Punks, in which your trusted Punks have turned into Agony Uncles. We are responding to a query that begins "Help, I'm butting heads with my finance manager!" with our usual mix of irreverence, spikiness and wisdom, drawing upon our personal experience (boy, have we been there!) and knowledge.

Our guest for this episode is Natasha Bye, also known as the Strategy Doctor, who has made a name for herself by bringing comedy into the boardroom. So what is the link between strategy and comedy? Do you get better conversations by wrapping it into a joke? How many people does it take to fix a lightbulb in your organisation? This and more will be topic of conversation in this month's Work Punks episode.

Some useful references:
- On Natasha Bye: https://strategydoctor.co.uk/
- "The future doesn't just happen; the future results from the conversations we have today" - We think this is Ralph Stacey. But we can't find it anywhere. Please help us locate the source.

Our Punks try to get behind the root causes of why working practices seem to be broken in so many companies. Is short-termism behind it all, and if so, what is causing this behaviour in the first place? Are there examples that buck that trend and what can we learn from them? Join us for this episode and share your experiences of broken or trend-bucking organisations in the comments. As always, here are some links for further contemplation:
- Bill Anderson - the former CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals and currently heading the working revoluation at Bayer - on how to reduce bureaucracy: https://www.garyhamel.com/video/busti...
- Clay Christensen’s view on the impact of financialisation on innovation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveden...

Our guest for this episode is Michael Pattinson, a 'tech enabler' formerly of Network Rail and PwC, who recently decided to go it alone in his new venture The One Hour Sprint Company. In this lively conversation we try to unpick what it takes to make a drastic career move, explore the power of meetings as key tool to change organisations, and amble past many related observations in the process.
Worthwhile references as well further reading on the topics touched upon:
- Michael Pattinson: / michael-pattinson-8713464
- Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business, by Patrick Lencioni, published by Jossey-Bass, 2004
- Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, by Herminia Ibarra, published by Harvard Business Review Press; Revised edition, 2023
- Find your Why: A practical guide for discovering purpose for you and your team, by Simon Sinek, published by Penguin Audio, 2017

At the occasion of Mental Health Awareness Week our punks explore what role our working environment plays when it comes to our mental health. Despite billions spent on measures to reduce work related stress, employees report higher than ever rates of burnout and are leaving the workplace altogether en-masse. And this concerns younger generations as well as older.
Is there something fundamentally wrong with how companies lead, manage and organise work? And what role do new technologies play in all this?
Join us for this episode and share your thoughts in the comments. Here are some references to points raised by our punks:
- The annual spend by businesses on mental health and wellbeing: https://www.reportlinker.com/p0589592...
- 'How burnout became the new normal', HBR: https://hbr.org/2024/04/how-burnout-b...
- The UK government is seeking to reduce benefits to people with mental health issues: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/...