The Mode/Switch

This week’s Mode/Switch Pod eavesdrops on, ya know, that office we’re all supposed to be returning to. And what we’re hearin’ is good ole-fashioned gossip. Boomer Ken, Xers David & Craig, Xillennial Emily, and Gen Z guest Gabe Mayes tell stories, share research, and swap advice about workplace whispers. (TLDR? We discuss what gossip means and what it does on the job.) So, if your coffee’s gone cold today, we got you! Press play on some audio caffeine and get something good to share around the office. Stay for our Spell It Out feature, too, in which we discuss a new phenomenon in workplace culture: The Hushed Hybrid. And don’t miss our a bonus segment, after the closing theme, when we taste-test MrBeast’s chocolate. (If you missed our beast mode episode, you can catch it here!)

This week, the Mode/Switchers straw-poll each other on this question: how many days do you want to work in office? Let’s just say that our Millennial, our Boomer, & our Xers aren’t in perfect alignment. But here’s what we are clear on on: despite the massive push for Returning to Office, workplaces cannot give way to nostalgia for pre-2020 conditions. (Look, CEO, the office before COVID wasn’t as awesome as you seem to think in 2024!) The fact that something like 79% of CEOs expect an RTO within 3 yrs raises a lot of questions for this week’s podcast: What should office culture become within the next few years? What values should shape the workplace, as so many of us sidle back in? How can organizations balance productivity and flexibility in a new era of work? Ken, LaShone, David, Emily, and I explore the evolutions of office culture. You'll hear intergenerational strategies for fostering connection in a distributed workforce. We tell pained stories. We ask hard questions. And we try to keep the human stuff first. This week’s Spell-It-Out feature addresses the phenomenon of Rage Applying. Are you a rage applicant? Tune in to find out. -craig

If twenty-somethings managed your company, what would your work culture be like? Thanks to a leaked memo from YouTuber MrBeast, we now have a glimpse: Crystal Fierce Metrics: “There is only room in this company for A-Players. A-Players are obsessive, learn from mistakes, coachable, intelligent, don’t make excuses, believe in Youtube, see the value of this company, and are the best in the goddamn world at their job.” Steroidal Growth Mindset: “Mistakes are okay!…Every veteran here has cost me a million dollars at one point or another, and you can go ask them yourself if I ever held it over their heads.” Flat-as-Pancake Structure: “I hate the word promotion….There is infinite room for you to grow here. This isn’t a stepping stone, this is your final destination.” This week, the Mode/Switchers—joined by Gen Z Jake Aupperlee—critically examine MrBeast’s metrics-driven workplace manual and its impact on workplace culture. We take on questions like: How would more bottom-up communication reshape our workplaces? What does “quality” actually mean in work driven by maximal efficiency? Would workplaces be better without HR departments? Jake schools the rest of us on what “beast mode” is in our Spell It Out Feature, and we propose a few mode/switches for your organizational community. Happy Friday, friends and mode/switchers! Here’s a podcast with an indispensable, intergenerational conversation for the start of your weekend! Hey, we want to hear from you! Just hit reply to this email and let us know how the Mode/Switch Pod’s working for you. What would you like to hear more of? Less of? Don’t miss this week’s banter across gender and generational divides across the workscape of the American workplace and in the shadow of the MrBeast empire.

What do you--45 days before the election--think about the Politics-over-Business claim that "Customers want excellence not activism"? This week, our intergenerational team discusses whether political neutrality is practicable in the workplace. When does political conviction become virtue signaling? Is it professional to be politically neutral? Should corporations have opinions? Is talking about politics at work badly better than not doing it all? Maybe the three best words in this week's conversation: “I would disagree…”

The writer Henri Nouwen made an important distinction between solitude and loneliness. The former's good. The latter's hard to bear, especially at work. So this week, the Mode/Switchers cuss-and-discuss workplace loneliness from intergenerational perspectives. Listen while you work to our research-based conversation, sharing stories (don’t miss Emily’s “cyclone of crazy” tale) and mode/switches in mindset and behavior. And we “spell it out” when it comes to that loneliest of contemporary phenomena: hotel-ing.

You’re a lucky person, maybe, if your job doesn’t ask a lot of you. But on top of all the reporting, meeting, messaging, measuring, marketing, and advocating, should your job also ask you to be resilient? Wrong question. At least, that’s a conclusion we came to in this week’s podcast. The prior question is what does it mean to be resilient?  Spoiler: our intergenerational team of Mode/Switchers identifies multiple ways to be resilient at work. This week, David, LaShone, and I are joined by two Gen Z guests: Kate Witvliet and Alexis Delk. This conversation makes a cat’s cradle of feelings in common—and not.

Nobody’s crazier than your company. Nothing’s better than your team. In the endless weirdness of institutions, you will find amazing teammates. But you’ll also see companies act like zombies seeking nothing but their own survival.  Good thing that, even when you hate your company, you can still love your team—right? Well, we Mode/Switchers feel that tension with special intensity. Google our workplace, Calvin University, and look at the last half a year of history. You’ll see why.  The question is, how do you find a good relationship between the team and the org? Answering that question might just take a mode/switch or two. Not that a shift in your mindset or behavior will transform your company. But try out one of the mode/switches we recommend this week, and you can convert the weird intensity you full in your company’s macro-culture into a vocational posture that’s livable and sustainable. And shareable with your team.

Recent social science says we’re holding roughly three times the meetings we used to. Derek Thompson writes that “The meeting-industrial complex has grown to the point that communications has eclipsed creativity as the central skill of modern work.” But wait whut? We’re being too communicative at work? Too relational? Too connected? Too interactive? Does that track? We Mode/Switchers take Thompson’s point. Cal Newport’s made similar arguments in the world of email, calling it “communication overload.” But these minimalist approaches to human interaction—Slash the meetings, burn the inboxes!—neglect the ways that meetings could be so much better than they are. The problem at work isn't that we have too many meetings. The problem's that we don't do meetings like the humans we are. Or should be.

Post-pandemic, is there an office dress code? A funny thing happens on the way through this week’s podcast on workplace fashion. Our chatty little intergenerational convo makes it sound like we’re agreeing with each other. But you’ll notice our proposed mode/switches are in definite tension. What else would you expect when intergenerational Mode/Switchers sit down to chat about dressing for the day you have and the matching sock you don’t? Do you think it’s okay to tell a coworker they look fabulous? Are you sick of making a million calculations standing in front of your closet? Do you think managers should make dress codes more or less explicit? What is the difference between business casual and smart casual? Pull up an earbud or two and tuck into a conversation at the Mode/Switch Table.

This week, we discuss big news from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)—their decision to focus on diversity and inclusion but not to talk about equity. We Mode/Switchers—David, LaShone, Ken, Emily, and I—are not on the same page on this one. Some are willing to ask whether this move to keep equity off the label but in the ingredients might be effective in workplace training. Others are critical: erasing the word equity will diminish the value of justice in the workplace. If you’re anxious about how the larger American political situation shapes workplace life, or if you’re just curious about why equity has become such a flashpoint today, you should join this conversation! Reply to this email with your own take on the role of equity in workplace structures and HR policy. Or you can send a note to themodeswitch@gmail.com. We’re also trying a new feature this week: Spell It Out! We take a workplace trend and tease out its meanings and implications in organizational culture. This week we’re spelling out “employer wellness.”