Two speakers discuss how workplace culture traps people in survival mode through competition and scarcity. They argue that small changes can shift organizations toward human flourishing instead of burnout and stress.
Our workplaces where we spend over 90,000 hours, it's a third of our lives. It's most of our waking hours during the day. A work day for adults have become these massive places of human suffering rather than on human flourishing. We are more prosperous than we've ever been, and yet we are creating more strife and suffering in the workplace.
For me, it just didn't sit well. The C word then was competition. Collaboration was sense of softness. You play hard, you work hard. The idea of balance was consistency. You work all night and on a deck and you wear like a badge of honor the next day. So it was so askew. It wasn't just making a lot of sense. Our whole modern culture is actually driven by stress and trauma. It's driven by a sense of scarcity, a sense of being uncomfortable in my skin, a sense of fear of others. And it brings out all of these destructive forces inside of us. And actually, now this isn't just metaphorical. We have all the science that shows this is true. Start where you are. Start with what you're doing. Make it small. Try that. And from the payback, invest.