Season 3 – Episode 022
After a hundred episodes of dissecting corporate nonsense, Jimmy and James finally admit what you already knew: the system is rigged, your boss matters more than your paycheck, and no one cares about your career as much as you do. This isn’t a highlights reel—it’s a reckoning.
From the delusion that “people can overcome a bad system” (spoiler: they can’t) to the farce of corporate purpose (hint: it’s usually just “make money”), the hosts expose the recurring patterns that make managers’ lives a living hell. They dissect how HR incentives turn good people into metric-gaming zombies, why your boss’s shadow looms larger than the company logo, and the cold truth that your employer will never love you back.
But it’s not all doom. There’s power in clarity: defining your team’s purpose (even if it’s just “sell more”), choosing your boss like you’d choose a flatmate, and detaching your ego from the corporate machine. And yes, it’s still all about people—flawed, emotional, and impossible to reduce to a spreadsheet.
So pour yourself a drink (or don’t—AA’s Serenity Prayer gets a shoutout) and listen to the hard-won wisdom of two men who’ve spent 100 episodes telling you what no one else will.
Five Key Points:
- The system always wins. No matter how brilliant your team is, a badly designed system will make them feel incompetent—and it’s not their fault.
- Purpose isn’t wallpaper. If your organisation’s “purpose” doesn’t match what actually happens, you’re just lying to yourself (and your customers).
- Your boss > your brand. That logo in the foyer? Irrelevant. Your boss’s ability to provide direction, space, and support? Everything.
- Your employer is not your friend. Redundancy, restructuring, or being passed over for promotion isn’t personal—it’s just business. Detach your ego.
- Manage your career or someone else will. If you outsource your career decisions, don’t be surprised when they’re made in someone else’s interest.
[00:00:00]
Jimmy: Hello, I’m Jimmy, and welcome to A Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance and enjoyment at work.
James: Good afternoon. How are you?
Jimmy: Afternoon, James. I’m doing well. How are you?
James: I am absolutely fabulous. You’re glowing.
Jimmy: The word. Yeah, in a middle-aged man sort of way. So what is today’s episode about?
[00:00:31]
Jimmy: Well, today we are doing something different. We’re looking back. We’ve had a hundred conversations now—feels like a thousand—and we’re reflecting on the challenges facing managers. The same tensions keep coming up, no matter the industry, personality, or organisation. This isn’t a highlights episode. It’s our attempt to say: if you are a manager, here’s what you’re really dealing with. It might get uncomfortable.
[00:01:11]
James: Fabulous. Sounds a bit deep.
Jimmy: As deep as two shallow people like us ever get.
[00:01:18]
James: Always used to make me laugh—used to have “deep dives” and I’d think, “Deep dive? You’d be bloody lucky if we went snorkeling.”
[00:01:28]
Jimmy: First point: the system you’re working in matters much more than you think.
James: The system is the whole environment—the processes, infrastructure, policies, rules, incentives, HR policies, and the way people actually do things. All of that has a massive impact on how your organisation works, and people don’t stand back and look at it as a whole.
[00:02:19]
Jimmy: This is one of those points where my view has really sharpened over these hundred episodes. Originally, I’d have argued that brilliant people could overcome a badly designed system. But now, I think you’re right. People feel like they’re failing no matter how hard they work because they’re in a badly designed system. It makes you feel incompetent, and the system has a massive impact.
[00:03:27]
James: A lot of it comes down to HR incentives and policies. Remember the story about selling insurance on loans?
Jimmy: Check out our episode on reward and recognition. The system incentivised the wrong behaviour. Managers felt like they were doing a good job, but they weren’t getting the results because the system was set up to incentivise the wrong things.
[00:04:06]
James: Bernie Smith gave the example of predicting life expectancy by how long someone can stand on one foot. Corporations would just make everyone practice standing on one foot—missing the point entirely. Getting your inputs and outputs wrong messes everything up.
[00:04:32]
Jimmy: Are you telling me you haven’t practiced standing on one foot?
[00:04:36]
James: So that’s number one: the system matters more than you think. What’s next?
[00:04:40]
Jimmy: Purpose. Everyone talks about it, but we see hardly anyone doing it well. It’s not just corporate wallpaper—it’s the reason your organisation exists and why your people work for you. But it’s usually implicit, buried in a deck somewhere, not living and breathing.
[00:05:22]
James: There’s a lot of talk, but the words and actions don’t match. You’ll say, “Our purpose is to provide world-class customer service,” but really, it’s to make a quick buck. Customers and employees see it, and it creates conflict.
[00:06:05]
Jimmy: We’ve given the NHS a hard time for prioritising waiting times over patient needs. And the Horizon scandal—another example. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Aravind Eye Hospitals in India wanted to eradicate needless blindness. In 2009, they treated 2.75 million patients, half for free, exceeded care benchmarks, and turned a profit. Clarity of purpose drives outstanding results.
[00:07:03]
James: On a micro level, if you ask your team what they’re here for, do they all give the same answer? In our first episode, I told the story of managing a sales team. We figured out our purpose was to make more sales. It drove action—people would ask, “Does this help us make more sales?” Clarity stops politics, anxiety, and agendas.
[00:07:45]
Jimmy: With the benefit of hindsight, “make more sales” wasn’t the greatest purpose—especially since we were selling PPI at the time.
[00:08:17]
James: So, systems and purpose—what’s next?
[00:08:20]
Jimmy: Your boss matters more to you than the company you work for. People choose brands, but once you’re past the logo in the foyer, it’s your boss who casts the shadow—positively or negatively. Choose your boss as carefully as you choose the brand you want to work for.
[00:08:50]
James: There’s research on this. Julian Birkinshaw did a lot of work on what makes a good boss. Good bosses provide clear goals, a consistent path forward, autonomy, and support. Bad bosses are unclear, unsupportive, and always on your back.
[00:09:22]
Jimmy: What did he say?
James: Good bosses provide clear goals and a consistent path forward. They don’t flip-flop, and if they change direction, they justify it logically. Everyone knows what they’re doing and why. It comes back to purpose.
[00:09:44]
Jimmy: Alana Friedman talked about this too when she discussed high-performing teams.
[00:09:49]
James: The second thing is space. A good boss grants autonomy. They let you figure out what you want to do and get on with it. You don’t want a boss who’s always on your back.
[00:10:00]
Jimmy: And the final thing is support. A good boss helps you get the resources you need, provides guidance, and shields you when necessary.
[00:10:15]
James: Those are the three elements of a good boss: direction, space, and support.
[00:10:22]
Jimmy: There are people listening now thinking, “Why didn’t these two discover this research when they were managing people?”
[00:10:31]
James: Think back to the bad bosses you’ve had—they were never clear about what they wanted, never backed you up, and were always on your case.
[00:10:47]
Jimmy: I can correlate my enjoyment and performance at work with whether I had a good boss or a bad boss.
[00:11:00]
James: And if you are somebody’s boss, how good a boss are you?
[00:11:05]
Jimmy: The flip side is that you’ve got to remember your employer is not a person. It’s a legal entity. It cannot love you back, no matter how much you love it.
[00:11:24]
James: It’s bad to fall in love with your employer because when things go wrong—redundancy, restructuring—it’s not personal. It’s just business.
[00:11:45]
Jimmy: And ultimately, to an organisation, you are a resource, a number. So when things happen—redundancy, being passed over for promotion—it’s not personal. It’s functional.
[00:12:25]
James: So what’s the key point here?
Jimmy: When I realised my organisation wasn’t disappointed in me—it was making a commercial decision about my role and future—I found it liberating. It felt less personal and helped me move on.
[00:12:48]
James: If you can detach your ego from the organisation, you’ll be in a better place.
[00:13:00]
Jimmy: Which leads us to our next point: be intentional about your career. Don’t just bob along. Nobody else is going to manage it for you.
[00:13:20]
James: We’ve found that our most popular episodes are about managing your career, managing upwards, and networking. People often outsource their career management, thinking, “I’ll do a good job and get on.” But life isn’t that simple.
[00:13:50]
Jimmy: There’s a quote: “If you don’t manage your own career, somebody will start managing it for you—and not in your best interest.”
[00:14:10]
James: One of our old bosses said I was letting him make decisions about my promotions and roles. He was doing it from his perspective, not mine. Don’t outsource your career.
[00:14:40]
Jimmy: And don’t forget, in the immortal words of Baz Luhrmann: “Wear sunscreen.”
James: Did you know they’ve updated that song for today’s era?
Jimmy: Basically, it says to avoid social media.
[00:15:15]
James: So where does that take us?
Jimmy: To our final point: in the end, it’s all about people.
[00:15:30]
James: We’ve gone full circle. We thought it was all about systems, but after a hundred episodes, we’ve realised it’s all about people. Systems shape behaviour, but systems are made of humans—flawed, emotional, and complex.
[00:16:02]
Jimmy: You can’t take the human out of the machine. People shape systems, and systems are made of humans. Every incentive lands in a nervous system. Every meeting is emotional.
[00:16:36]
James: You’ve got to think about the human in the machine. Management practices are often mechanistic, which brings me back to my pet hate: HR.
[00:16:55]
Jimmy: James, you’ve got a real thing about HR. We’ve worked with some great HR people. They’ll be listening to this thinking, “James always hated us.”
James: The CIPD can have a good stab at me. But the question is: what are the implications of your decisions on your people? Don’t be surprised by their reactions.
[00:17:15]
Jimmy: The system and the humans in it are complex, but everyone wants simple solutions. Bosses, shareholders, the media—they all want quick fixes. But with complexity, that’s not always possible.
[00:17:48]
James: Rarely is. So what’s the wisdom after a hundred episodes?
Jimmy: It’s about navigating the system, accepting what you can’t change, and having the courage to change what you can.
[00:18:10]
James: And as the Serenity Prayer says: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
[00:18:30]
Jimmy: And on that note, we’ll call it quits. Thanks for listening to the first hundred episodes.
James: Here’s to the next hundred.
[00:18:55]
Jimmy: Thanks, everyone.
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