Season 3 – Episode 20: With John Seddon Welcome to the 100th episode of A Job Done Well—where we celebrate the art of calling out corporate nonsense and replacing it with something that actually works. This week, we’re joined by John Seddon, a management thinker so influential he’s got his own Wikipedia page (unlike James, who may or may not have written his own). John’s spent decades proving that traditional management—targets, incentives, standardisation—doesn’t just fail to improve performance; it actively makes things worse. John’s approach is simple: stop incentivising the wrong things. Most organisations reward behaviours that undermine their own goals. Engineers rushed to fix … [Read more...]
Making A.I. Work for You
Season 3 – Episode 1: With James Crawford We're back for season 3 with a muddle of James's! To kick the season off, hosts James Lawther and Jimmy Barber explore how we can all use artificial intelligence at work with special guest James Crawford. Unless you're living under a rock, you'll be aware of the promise of AI revolutionising the workplace. This tends to focus on how organisations, governments, or public services will utilise AI and automate various jobs. Today, we explore how we as individuals can use AI to help us get ahead and revolutionise how we work. AI expert James Crawford shares his 5P's model and also explains which AI systems work best for specific jobs. He then … [Read more...]
Will Artificial Intelligence Take All of Our Jobs?
Season 2 – Episode 41: What Do the Computers Think? In this episode, hosts James Lawther and Jimmy Barber discuss the impact of AI on contact centres and back-office jobs. This follows a question from Rob, a member of the audience, who asked about the potential for AI to reduce contact centre jobs by a claimed 80-90% in the next year or two. The hosts share insights from a former guest, Alex Alexander's AI team, and James interviews Google's Gemini to discover if the AI themselves believe they will put us all out of a job. This is all balanced with a bit of real-world experience of tech transformations. Check out the episode and see what they conclude - Are the robots taking … [Read more...]
The Blindingly Obvious, but Seldom Practiced Way to Improve Profitability.
Season 2 – Episode 26: With Adrian Swinscoe. In this episode, we welcome guest Adrian Swinscoe, an author, researcher, and advisor on customer service and experience. Adrian challenges the underlying management beliefs that you should try to manage revenue, cost, and profitability and explains how you can create better organisational outcomes by focusing on your employees and customers. The discussion also covers the shortcomings of chatbots, artificial intelligence, and the desire to control “the customer experience”. It is all about inputs and outcomes. Listen in to find out more. Adrian Swinscoe Described as an experimental CX thought leader and visionary, Adrian Swinscoe … [Read more...]
Leveraging Your Strengths
Season 1 – Episode 7: Don’t Let Harry Kane Play in Goal! This podcast is the first of two festive episodes aimed at helping you plan for a bumper 2024. In this episode, we discuss the value of playing to your strengths and why we tend to focus on developing the things we're not good at rather than further developing the things we are good at. We explore what this means to individuals and leaders and how this can help unlock outstanding results. We will be back in the New Year with an episode on setting goals, which will also help make 2024 the stuff of dreams! Until then, enjoy the festive period. Transcript James: 0:03 I'm James. Jimmy: 0:04 Hi, I'm … [Read more...]