Pioneers Podcast by Lyreco
The podcast from Lyreco that explores the Future of Work, from Lyreco's innovation team.
Each episode we talk to a pioneer of the future of work, exploring the themes and trends that will shape the workplaces of tomorrow.
Pioneers Podcast by Lyreco
Brain Moving: The Psychology of Workplace Change
Organizational psychologist and BrainMove founder Anton Maes explores how workplace environments impact productivity, wellbeing, and organizational culture, particularly in the shift to hybrid working models. Anton reveals practical strategies to manage change, engage teams, and create productive workplaces that balance business needs with human psychology.
• The psychology of resistance to change and why people experience change as uncomfortable
• Balancing productivity objectives with employee wellbeing needs
• Why face-to-face interaction remains critical for knowledge sharing and team building
• The limitations of using solely physical environments to attract employees
• Creating effective activity-based workspaces that support different work processes
• How leadership practices need to adapt to hybrid working models
• Practical approaches to bring teams back together while maintaining flexibility
• The four key elements for successful hybrid working: environment, structure, knowledge exchange, and leadership
• Why leadership communities are becoming increasingly important
• How disruption can be positive for organizational growth when managed well
Join us at our Future of Work event on June 5th where Anton will be speaking and participating in a panel on return-to-work strategies.
Welcome to the Pioneers podcast by Lyreco. I'm Marc Curtis. Now today I am speaking to a really interesting guy and I'm recording this intro actually after I've just finished my conversation with him, which went on for about 50 minutes or so, so one of the longer ones, but honestly, the reason for that is that he really had so much to say on the subject. So I'm talking today to Anton Maes. Anton is a organizational psychologist. Now he will explain what that is and I think he does a good job of that, and I think you'll have a much better understanding about organizational psychology is and why it's important. He's also the founder of a consultancy called BrainMove. It's important. He's also the founder of a consultancy called brain move and their whole remit really is to help companies with change management, but also very specifically making sure that that that the whole organization is brought along. So it's it's it's seeing the needs of the organization, but how that actually applies to the people who are having the change thrust upon them, if I can say it like that.
Marc Curtis:Anton is also talking at our Future of Work event on 5th June, and I mentioned that at the end of the podcast. But if you're listening to this before the 5th June. You'll be delighted to know that there are still a few tickets available. Anton will be one of the many speakers who we have. Anton will also be on a panel discussion about return to work, returning to the office, a topic which we think is of huge importance and relevance to pretty much any business at the moment, really in these times, in these disruptive times. So sit back and listen to my conversation with Anton. Anton Maes, welcome to the Pioneers podcast from Lyreco. Thank you very much for taking the time today.
Anton Maes:Nice to be here, Marc. Thank you.
Marc Curtis:Now, as we were just chatting about before we started, I'm not going to do a full introduction on you, mainly because I'd like you to tell me what an organizational psychologist is, but to introduce you a little bit, you are an organizational psychologist and you're also the founder of brain move, which is a consultancy, I believe, which works with companies to advise on design, um, and change management, uh, especially around the, the physical workplace, but, um, but thank you again for being here and and yeah, so, first of all, what is an organizational psychologist? Right? Thank you again for being here and yeah, so, first of all, what is an organizational psychologist?
Anton Maes:Thank you, marc. That's a good question because organizational psychology is quite a wide field. Mostly it will be dropped down to HR and psychologists working in the HR field, on selection of people, on training, development et cetera. But my specific field is much more, I would say, on environmental psychology. It is how can we create an environment in which organizations can do a good job and in which teams can work in a good way together. Mostly people think that a psychologist is only involved in individual psychology. I'm not feeling well or I have some issues, can we talk? Of course that's an important aspect of psychology, but I'm mostly interested in how do people work together and what is the relationship between people and how can we improve the way they work together via the work environment that we're creating. So it's a bit of a specific field not very known and, for example, at my own university, the University of Ghent, it's a topic that is not. There's no lectures on this topic.
Marc Curtis:Right. So is it a relatively new field, or is it just something that's kind of bubbled along in the background?
Anton Maes:I think in the Anglo-Saxon world it has been around for almost 100 years. Oh right, yeah, yeah, but in Belgium it's not very widespread. I think maybe that's linked to the lack of interest from certain academics, but you know, there's always fields that are more developed than others, and I guess it's trends as well.
Marc Curtis:I'm curious, anton, before we get more into it, just to hear a little bit about your background as well, because I can imagine that you wouldn't have come out of school thinking I want to be an organizational psychologist. So what's your, what's your route to where you are now? And, yeah, if you could give me a little bit about your journey to now, that would be really interesting.
Anton Maes:I must say, when I was a kid, I was mostly interested in architecture. I was always drawing and always trying to figure out my perfect house, and also drawing machines and cars, and mostly technical. But then, for some weird reason, I started doing a study on medicine school. So I was trained for three years to become a doctor, but that went really bad because I was not the best student, and I was really. I was a hardworking guy, but I must say my memory is not so good. So I'm.
Anton Maes:And then I start to think, okay, so this medicine school, it's not for me. I'm not never going to be a doctor, but I still am interested in how do people work together and what is the interaction between people, as I mentioned before. And then I said, okay, why not study psychology then? And with my background from medicine school, of course, I had a head start. And in psychology at the beginning I thought, yeah, what can I do? That also brings me into contact with businesses and which has also more a commercial aspect to it. And then, this way, I rolled into the organizational psychology brings me into contact with businesses and which has also more a commercial aspect to it. And then, this way, I rolled into the organizational psychology but the beginning of my career.
Anton Maes:I worked for 10 years in the energy business and I was mostly into communications management, project management. So I came out of the closet as a psychologist only, let's say, 15 years ago when I said okay, I saw around me a lot of projects where organizations were moving, they were moving from A to B, and already during my internship I was involved in this kind of project and I said moving boxes around is not so difficult. I mean, you just put them in a truck and then on the next day you take them out of the truck. But moving people around is much more difficult, moving and then moving brains around. So how can we, uh, make people work in a different way? And that's where the name brain move comes from. You know, and I already thought of that when I was just a student- I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean I can definitely see the root.
Marc Curtis:I mean, as a project manager you're often involved in taking on projects. Obviously You're involved in understanding all the different variables and all the different limitations and all the different things that need to be achieved, quite often in a physical or you know, kind of a deadline sense sense. But I guess, if I'm hearing you correctly, you you became very interested then in what is the kind of, you know, the one variable that project management doesn't really account for, which is how people feel about it or how people react to change. And I mean I was always struck. I heard a long time ago that somebody told me that change is a physically, it's a physical pain for some people. We actually respond to change in the same way that we do almost like physical harm. So I'm guessing that's kind of your routine is trying to understand those variables in the whole kind of process, right?
Anton Maes:Very much, because, indeed, people have their habits, they are used to a certain way of working. They are used to a certain way of working and if you want to change that, you are touching upon their comfort, the personal comfort and this is something that's often said and it was formulated by JP Cotter for the first time the resistance to change is mostly linked to the feeling that people will lose personal comfort, right, um so? And, and as you said, personal comfort is also linked to psychological and physical comfort, because I sit here, I feel good, I have the sun on my, uh, on my desk, uh, I'm in a nice place with nice people, I feel warm, etc. So why change this? I don't want to change this. I don't want to go in a new situation where there's an uncertainty, you see.
Anton Maes:So change is very much about psychology and, especially when you're trying to change, to work on this resistance, you will have to provide people with new insights and show them what a new situation could be, and they need time to adapt to this, and that's why we always say change is a process, it's not an event.
Anton Maes:You take people step by step through this process, the only thing that you have to do and I'm always saying this to my customers every step has to be in the good direction. You have to do and I'm always saying this to my customers every step has to be in the good direction, because often you see projects where they want to change a lot organizations, they want to adapt a lot and they're doing all kinds of actions. But some actions are in the good direction and other actions, I would say, are not so good and are not in line with their vision and with what they want to accomplish. So a change manager is doing a lot of project management, is doing a lot of communication management, but is also handling the psychology of the targets of the users.
Anton Maes:So it's a really nice combination of different competences.
Marc Curtis:We're often told and it seems to be a bit of a trope, especially if you're on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn, I think, gives a very distorted view of what we should be achieving personally, professionally. I think it's rapidly becoming the career equivalent of Instagram in terms of self-loathing and feeling that you're not achieving enough. But we're often told that we need to get out of our comfort zones, and yet that's somewhat counterintuitive, right? Because actually our comfort zones is where we want to be. You know, is there a big difference between the change that people inevitably have to face in the companies or their working environments and the change that perhaps we seek? So I guess, going back to the comfort zone idea, one might think, well, I need to move to a job where I'm more challenged, or I might need to move to a new city or whatever, and that's getting out of your comfort zone. But surely that must also have the same kind of psychological impact even if you're asking for it as the kind of big changes that companies are, you know, inflicting on people as well, right?
Anton Maes:yeah, these are two sides of a coin, because we have to think about where do we want to go with this organization. What do we want to achieve? Because the survival of the organization is extremely important for the people that work for the organization.
Anton Maes:So, we always have to think in the interest of the organization While we're doing that. We have to boost productivity of the organization, but we also have to boost well-being of people, and these two are connected to each other. Yeah, they're not linearly connected, which means that it's not because you have a higher well-being that productivity will be higher, because you can make it very, very, very comfortable for everybody and everybody is just doing nothing playing cards that I don't think that's how we see the organization. So we have the duty to optimize productivity whilst making sure that people feel good and can develop in our organization.
Anton Maes:But sometimes this objective is a bit lost and out of sight. I mean, the focus lately and I see this a lot on LinkedIn is very much on this wellbeing aspect, and yeah, we have to feel good and we have to develop ourselves and we have to do all these amazing things, but let's not forget that we are still a society and there's still this wider responsibility and the organization is a part of that. So sometimes I consider myself as I said in the beginning, I consider myself to be an organizational psychologist, which means that I'm interested in is the organization doing well, which means that I'm interested in is the organization doing well? Some people in this organization might not feel good with a certain change and they shall decide will I stay or will I go.
Marc Curtis:I think it's the clash will I stay or will I go?
Anton Maes:Yeah, so I think we have to take that into consideration. We cannot do everything well for everybody. That's impossible. We have to treat our people good and we have to give them choices and we have to give them opportunities to develop, but we will never be able to have 100 of people um being 100 happy with all the changes that we are implementing well, it's.
Marc Curtis:It's the old adage, isn't it? You can't please all of the people all of the time. You can please some of the people all the time, or maybe all of the people some of the time. I'm quite curious just before we, because clearly you're coming at it from a very pragmatic organizational approach, which means, I'm guessing, the sort of the greater good is the. You know, it's kind of the context. You know, what do you do for the greater good? The continuation of the company. I mean, after all, you know, as you say, you can make the company the friendliest place in the world, but if you're not making any money, then everybody's going to lose their job and you know the point is moot.
Marc Curtis:I guess there are different ends of that spectrum. So you can have a company where it's a horrible working environment but everything is profit driven, and then and then you end up with a company where everybody leaves.
Marc Curtis:So you know exactly you, you there's, there's that sliding scale. I am only because it's interesting and I you know, and maybe you know you can tell me whether or not it's something that that falls outside of your remit or outside of your um. You know what you think about. But I am quite curious to dive in a little bit into the LinkedIn stuff, and it wasn't necessarily something I was going to sit down and talk about, but it strikes me as very salient that quite often one sees on LinkedIn posts from this new breed of business influencer suggesting that we should have no regrets in our lives, that we should take risks. We should.
Marc Curtis:You know, if you don't like your job, you should walk away from it and start a startup or whatever, and it's very easy to fall into this trap. I think of looking on this and reading all this stuff and somehow thinking you're not measuring up, you're not doing enough. Is that a worry? Is that something that you? Um, is that a worry? Is that? Is that? Is that something that's that you think is is having a big impact on, on our working lives, our working psychologies, in the same way that social media has perhaps impacted our personal interactions and our personal lives?
Anton Maes:as a business manager, because I have my own company with 12 people working in it and these are all people on the payroll. So I do not want to use freelancers because I think that as a company, we are a family and we have to help each other. We have to learn from each other. Of course, if, if there's would be a training or a workshop and I would need extra hands, why not a freelancer? That's not a problem. But I mean, the core of my company is a group of people that are well linked together and what I see around me is that there's a lot of individualization I don't know if the word exists, but this focus on the individual and then this fear of missing out.
Anton Maes:I just had an experience with a young consultant that started in my team psychologist, very good profile and after three months she said yeah, anton, I have a major issue. My friend asked me, her boyfriend asked me to move to Australia. I have to go and she only started with me for three months. So I invested a lot of time and a lot of effort in training her and in bringing her into contact with my customers and showing her the skills and helping her and and and then I was. I said, okay, but you're 25, I mean you just started this mission, you just started this job, you're getting integrated in in in this new field, in in this new uh, in this new job and already you're deciding that you have to go because you're afraid of missing out if not going to australia.
Anton Maes:you see so I think that, um, and maybe it's the influence of social media, probably people think that they always have to go one step beyond and there's another reference to music here one step beyond. Madness indeed indeed. So I think that um, um, it's, it's tripping over a little bit to that side. And we're Generation X. I mean, we've been trained by, we've been taught by our parents that we have to behave, work hard, be quiet and we will get far. So maybe that is a bit too extreme because we're working day and night. On the other hand, what I see in this younger generation is, yeah, they have no patience, they want to move very fast and maybe they sometimes miss out this way on very interesting experiences and in-depth learning. But okay, who am I?
Marc Curtis:I mean, it's the eternal debate, isn't it? You know, every generation thinks the next generation is, is somehow feckless, or or or lacks concentration. Of course, with our generation, generation X, I can say categorically the future generations are worse than our one, obviously.
Anton Maes:No, I mean it's.
Marc Curtis:It's.
Marc Curtis:I do think it's fascinating, and I think it's unprecedented, the way that social media has impacted our ability or certainly younger people, digital natives ability to focus, to perhaps commit to longer term projects, both personally and professionally, and I think that there will potentially be a backlash at some point.
Marc Curtis:Maybe, or maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I think, taking it back to the challenges faced by businesses, I think what you do there is you've identified something really challenging, which is that we have, you know, the biggest part of the workforce now is going to be the Gen Zs Very soon, by 2025, I think that by 2035, they're a significant portion of the majority of the workforce and they have a completely different set of expectations when it comes to work. And I think, if I may just bring in that background to the changes since the pandemic around hybrid and flex work and the impact on offices, how, how is that, how are you finding that is impacting organizations? How are they balancing the needs of this younger generation who don't want to be in the office full time. They might want to take career breaks, they might want to, as you say, suddenly go to Australia because they might worry that they might never get a chance to go to Australia again. How are organizations dealing with that and and how are you helping them?
Anton Maes:I, um, I just I want to. I, I knew that you, you would ask this question and I think the, the, the link is very logical um because, uh, as an organization, you need to have the best people.
Anton Maes:Yeah, that's that you want. And as work is changing immensely, the best people are the people that can adapt and that can solve difficult problems and that can handle ad hoc situations and that can improvise. These are the people that we need, the people that can quickly solve solutions. Okay, give me 10 minutes and I'll figure something out. So, if you want to attract these people, you will, and that's what everybody wants. They all want to be an attractive employer.
Anton Maes:And then the small turn I wanted to make back to the generation that's coming now is that these people have the big advantage, that they have a huge comfort. I mean, as the former generations have worked really, really, really hard to build the economic situation that we're in right now. So the big difference is that when we were young guys, there was no work. I mean, when I was studying psychology, people said to me Anton, what the hell are you going to do with that? I mean, how will you find a job? My father said to me why aren't you a doctor or an engineer? I mean, as a psychologist, nobody wants to hire a psychologist.
Anton Maes:Today, this is completely different. There is a lot of demand on the market, so this generation has the comfort of choice. They can choose where they work, they can choose. They can say, oh, I don't want to work five days a week, I want to work only four days a week. So you can offer me five days, but I will refuse, and that is a huge difference. So they are looking for discomfort. They're used to discomfort.
Anton Maes:So what we need to offer them is an added value. As an organization and I am a lot in contact with these people because I have with my customers, but also in my own organization what I see is the biggest demand they have is the demand to learn, and this one on this one we can develop something, because they want to learn and learning is still done face-to-face. Of course, you can do online courses and you can do online meetings and whatever, but the biggest learning experience is on the job, is being with colleagues watching them work, listening, asking questions, questions, meeting them at the coffee machine, uh, asking just like that, an ad hoc question, hearing something, um and I think this is something that is completely um, this is a really, really nice opportunity as an organization, providing the context in which this gen, these younger generations, can learn.
Anton Maes:And this is now defining the way we see work environments. Um, because with this hybrid stuff, you were also mentioning this, uh, this evolution after the pandemic. Uh, this this team calls. I'm sitting in the office the whole day with a headphone on my head just talking to people who are at home or who are maybe abroad. I don't know, that's not ideal, that is not a learning environment. No, I want to be with colleagues, I want to be with a team.
Marc Curtis:It's very transactional, isn't it? These kind of calls, I mean, obviously we're doing this over Zoom and that's. You know it's great and it means that you know both of us don't have to travel for hours to go and talk to each other. I'm in France at the moment. You're in Belgium, presumably in Ghent, somewhere near there. So you know, that's great.
Marc Curtis:But what I've always found with with team and Zoom calls is that you, you jump on a call for a reason there is no, there's no. You know, you might have a little bit of chitchat at the beginning. In the end, you know, some may, maybe, maybe not. The more people on a call that you have, the less likely anybody is to interact to anybody else, because suddenly you feel, if you're one of 40 people, that you somehow don't have the right to speak, or you always end up with one person who dominates the conversation. But but they're very transactional. We don't, we don't, we don't have those moments anymore and I don't think.
Marc Curtis:I think that the challenge potentially for the this group of people who are coming into the workforce now, who who maybe 50 of their experience, is going to be through teams. Yeah, I mean, it sounds to me like what you're saying is that they're not learning all of those soft skills that we never really thought about, we never had to think about before, did we? We they? They just kind of happened. You know the how do you behave in an, in an office, how do you say hello to people? You know the, the chit chat. You know, and, as you say, that's where you pick up the, the, the uncodified um learning opportunities in a business, right.
Anton Maes:Exactly, and there's quite some research on this now, because, for example, one of the things that we see in research is that in-depth learning is much more related to informal relationships than informal interaction.
Anton Maes:And so we can organize Teams, meetings, as you say, very formal, very planned, with a scope and an objective, and we can handle that. But the transferral of information lacks depth in this way, which means that we don't have the time to ask more questions, to pick up on something, to stand up and use a whiteboard, to write something down, and that's what's happening now. Also, this has a quite negative effect on team building, because if you want to build a team, you have to slow down instead of speeding up. And what was happening during these Corona times? We were all so afraid that we would lose productivity that we were speeding up and we were having meetings from six in the morning until seven in the evening because we want to make sure that, and in the beginning we saw that productivity was very high. But now we see that this is starting to drop, because if you want to create a team and you want to collaborate, you have to slow down the process.
Anton Maes:You have to organize an interaction where people take time, where they go in depth, where they ask questions, where they sit together, where they drink a coffee together, and this is a very big risk Again, one of the reasons why we have to invest in interesting office environments. Maybe I just can um can make, if you want, I can make, a link to the to the back to office uh movement. Yeah, sure, yeah, and just explain a little bit uh, how, how I see that? Because a lot of uh our customers think you put a nice food truck in the parking lot and everybody will say, hey, now there's Thai food today, so I'm going to the office.
Anton Maes:Spending three hours in the traffic jam Only using the work environment to bring people back to the office is very difficult. Of course, you have comfort elements. I mean, at home I don't have the really big screen, I don't have the comfortable chair, so this is better at work, of course. So this should be covered. The work environment should be attractive. Second element in that would be the structure you create to bring people back, which means that you have some kind of framework in which you have conventions on. We expect you to come back these days. We want you to pick up the phone. We want you to work in this way together, etc. So that's the more formal the framework that you create.
Anton Maes:The third element in that was already mentioned, and that is the knowledge exchange. So if you want to bring people back to the office, you need to make sure that if they go, there is an added value, they learn, they exchange information, they pick up stuff, they build a network. So that's the third aspect. And the fourth aspect is leadership, and there is a very big responsibility for our generation and also, of course, now the newer coming leaders, to take responsibility and to make sure that in this work environment, the needs of the people are covered, that people can be productive, that they can learn, that they can work together, that they feel good, because one of the main reasons why I would come to an office environment is to see my boss, to check and to see okay, how am I doing?
Anton Maes:What can I improve? I have a question. Can you help me? Maybe I have a need, I need more resources, I need something, but also the authenticity and the coaching aspect of leadership. I don't feel very good, I have a problem. Can I talk to you? You're asking me questions. You're interested in what I'm doing, and all these aspects are not really covered in a virtual interaction. In an online interaction, it's much, much more difficult. So, just to be short, if you want to bring back people to the office, it's not only investing in a very interesting office environment, but also in this framework, in this knowledge sharing and in this leadership, and these all go together in some kind of holistic system that you have to create.
Marc Curtis:So clearly this is something that you in your company work on a lot with your customers, with your clients. Who's doing it well? And tell me as well, because we all love a disaster story I'd love to contrast, if you can, two case studies one where it's done really well and what the impact has been and how they're continuing to sort of to do it. If you've got any, and are there any disaster stories or cautionary tales that you can share with us?
Anton Maes:The disaster story is always linked to leadership and to a lack of leadership, to a lack of vision. I've seen organizations where they just think only about costs and they say, okay, we're working now in two buildings, we have measured the occupancy and we see that one building is empty and can be abandoned, is empty and can be abandoned. So let's just do that without taking into consideration the impact on people, the impact on culture, and without involving the leadership team. And especially if you have a leadership team that's very much focused on expertise for people that are into their job, and mostly you see organizations where the biggest expert becomes the biggest boss, and that can be a huge risk because they're very much focused on the business and they're not focused on building, creating this environment, creating this team.
Anton Maes:So I've seen customers that wanted to make the change and that went completely against the wall because people didn't understand. There was no vision, so they couldn't understand the vision, and so they went into resistance and they put their heels in the sand and they really stopped collaborating. What you get then is bad solutions, because then the customer says, yeah, we want to have an activity-based working environment, but nobody's respecting, for example, the clean desk policy, nobody is using the meeting booths or everybody's claiming a fixed spot. Then they ask me anton, what can we do? And my first answer is always okay, but uh, was the middle management involved in this or not?
Marc Curtis:and and that's a recipe for disaster, uh, not involving them so don't just so, don't just go in there and just make some announcements about the way it's going to be. You have to bring people along. I mean it's interesting. I mean we've been through.
Marc Curtis:As you know, you've visited our offices in Brussels and we've been through a similar process where you know, obviously we want people to use the space, we want people to have a certain amount of flexibility.
Marc Curtis:We've tried to create something. Tried to create something and and, and I'd be actually it'd be really interesting for you to tell me what you understand to be an activity-based um work environment, because I think that could be quite interesting. But but, yes, I think, if you don't, there's a balance, right? Because on the one hand, you want to capture the views and needs of everybody, but at the same time, I imagine that if you try to satisfy and it goes back to the point at the beginning of this if you you try and satisfy everybody's needs, you end up with something that's quite unworkable, right? Because suddenly, if you, I think it's good to ask people what they want, but at the same time, you know there has to be parameters around what you're able to do, because not everybody can sit and work in their own personal ideal environment. But but activity, work, activity-based work work environments what is that, tell me?
Anton Maes:tell me a little bit more about that first of all, activity-based working is uh, it's not a law I mean, it's not written in stone um it, there is no, no magic formula that everybody has to uh implement it to have to have a good working environment and activity-based working. For me, it's about aligning the work environment to the processes of the people that work there. Okay, uh, it doesn't mean that people have to walk around all day looking for a spot to sit. For me, an activity-based work environment is an environment If I want to work on my invoices the whole day and that's my job, and I am a sedentary profile, so I do this all day and that's what I like to do when I come to the office then I will have to find the perfect spot to do this.
Anton Maes:If I have this job and I do this all day, then all day I will be at that spot and that is, in that case, the work environment that optimally supports my process. But this also means if I want to learn and if I want to meet people and if I want to have a coffee and have some informal discussions, I need to find a work environment where I also have this option, so where I can go to another environment and have this activity, so the work environment will always have to be adapted to the processes, and this is something that is sometimes forgotten. In the past this is 10 years ago often people were talking about yeah, we need a Google environment.
Anton Maes:You know we want to do a Google or we want to do a Microsoft, but what I see, for example, is that Microsoft, every three, four years, they're changing their work environment, so the model that they had 15 years ago has been completely changed since.
Anton Maes:So there is not one model, there is only a model that's optimally adapted to the needs and culture of your organization, which means that you have to understand what these needs are, which means that you have to study the processes, and this is our job as organizational processes, organizational psychologists, is to analyze these processes and to adapt the working environment, and it could be that at the end, it is a very boring environment, just with, I don't know, with the same kind of desks and and just people, if if that's what you need, or a very busy environment. I was uh last week with one of the major newspapers in belgium and we were on the on their uh I don't know if it's called like this the redaction floor, where the, the editors, are the the floor yeah, yeah, like an open plan, you know, kind of I think.
Marc Curtis:I think they would have called it the, the is it the bullpen or the the, something like that. Yeah, there's a word.
Anton Maes:There's a. There's a word. This is a very busy environment people walking around waving papers, watching screens but that's how they want it. That's what they need to do their job, uh, so is that wrong? No, it's not wrong, but if you have people that are working on legal documents for them, it's not the perfect environment. So you have to adapt the working environment to the needs and to the process of the organization.
Marc Curtis:So that's kind of so. Typically, then, an engagement for you and for your company then is to spend a period of time observing, presumably talking to the various different roles within an organization to understand what it is that they need and, I guess, how far away from what they actually already have they are, and then trying to map the journey between those two points.
Anton Maes:Yeah, but you have to be very careful with the needs of people, because if I send out a questionnaire to a thousand people and I ask them what they want, I will get all kinds of stuff, from aquariums to special coffee machines, to special carpets, etc. What interests me mostly is what does the organization need to facilitate the process and, within this framework, how can I optimize the experience of the worker? And you will say now, that's strange, anton, you're a psychologist there, you should listen to what people want and what they need. Well, again, the beginning of our conversation. What interests me is what, as an organization, do we need, right?
Anton Maes:So we will never send out this kind of uh questionnaires. We will never do that. We will involve people through, for example, workshops, but always in what I call a tactical way and not a strategical way. We will never ask people where do we want to go, because everybody wants to go in a different direction. No, we will ask them this is the way we're going, this is our direction. But how will we go there? And that's a much more interesting question, because we will go to a flexible environment. We will work paperless, we will use meeting booths to have, for example, discussions, but how will we use this, how will we adapt our behavior? That's a really interesting question, and on this you can organize participation without any problem without any problem.
Marc Curtis:I think it's, I've always been.
Marc Curtis:It's something I often say to people when we talk about what the top challenges that people will often identify in the workplace are, and we've sent out surveys before and as part of the innovation sort of activities in Lyreco, we quite often test ideas or ask ideas of our own people first.
Marc Curtis:We've got quite a lot of people who work for Lyreco, so it's an easy first place to start. But my experience is, if you send out surveys and ask people what would improve their working environment, the top three things that always come back almost exclusively are better lighting, better air quality or better air conditioning and better noise reduction, which I guess if you were to purely use that as a guide, you would have everybody sitting in air-conditioned pods with earphones on, which perhaps doesn't take you to where you want to be as an organisation. I mean, tell me what's one of the most counterintuitive, if you like, insights or recommendations that you've had to make. If you like insights or recommendations that you've had to make Having had this kind of discovery phase or having sort of tried to translate the needs of the workers through, as you say, the organizational demands or direction.
Anton Maes:That is not an easy question. I've been in this business for 15 years, so so I also had to develop a methodology, and and and. So today, for me, what I'm saying seems really logical. On the other hand, I I often uh, when I'm speaking to this to customers, I often see in their eyes that they never looked at the work environment in the way that we are doing. They just see it as some kind of productive thing, just some meeting rooms and some….
Marc Curtis:It's a container. It's a container where you put people to produce stuff, exactly.
Anton Maes:Yeah, and especially I mean now for the moment in Brussels. This has evolved a lot. We see that last 15 years there were major developments. Also, the pandemic gave a gigantic boost to hybrid working. I think all over the world, even in countries like in Japan or in China where it would have been impossible, this has now become quite common. So I don't think I can answer your question. I hope that's not a problem.
Marc Curtis:No, no, but I think that's interesting in and of itself.
Marc Curtis:I think what it shows is that you've developed a theory through experience and through interacting with companies and actually it's followed a. You know, if I can paraphrase a relatively logical progression, let me phrase it in a different way then. It's a different question, really. But I'm also curious to know whether or not there is, whether you have challenges, um, talking to business leaders, um, people who probably don't have the experience, the same experience as the people that are working in their offices, for example, or in their work environments. Um, you know, do you, do you often face challenges with, with them trying to explain things that maybe they haven't experienced themselves personally for 20 years? Or, you know, and actually, if you, if you're talking very senior, senior leadership, sort of C level, they, they've probably been, they've had a very different experience, for example, of the COVID times, and they maybe haven't, you know, they're not doing the flex work thing for you know, for completely separate reasons. Is there a challenge there in trying to balance those needs? Does that create conflict?
Anton Maes:Well, I mean, that's yeah, that's very concrete. What we see is that business leaders often have a vision and they want to go somewhere, and then they formulate, for example, some kind of values and they say, yeah, we want to be transparent. Transparency is very important for us. And if then you take a look at their work environment, you see all closed doors and closed offices and you say, okay, but so your value is transparency, but this is the way you create the work environment. We should not forget that the work environment is a perfect lever for the organizational culture, and so the two go together.
Anton Maes:Same thing, for example, on sustainability yeah, we want to be sustainable, ah, okay. So, as a business leader, we want to be sustainable. Okay, so, as a business leader, we want to invest in, let's say, solar panels, or we want to be geothermy or whatever. And then I will say, okay, but you think sustainability is important, but sustainability is bricks, bytes and behavior. Okay, so, of course, it's about bricks. You don't want empty offices. You don't want, uh, um, expensive stuff that's not used. Um, it's about planet, uh, it's, it's about people, planet, profit. I'm sorry, people, planet profit. Um, you, you take a look at your profit. You take a look at your planet. You don't want to. You don't want waste, you don't want to produce waste. You want to be uh, um, having a having a a very um, efficient, efficient and healthy work environment.
Anton Maes:But next to that, there's also the people aspect.
Anton Maes:The people aspect that's often forgotten, which means that people have to feel good, you need well-being, people need to be able to develop themselves, etc.
Anton Maes:So if a business leader says to me yeah, anton, I want a sustainable working environment, okay, that's not only because you're using recyclable furniture that you have a sustainable work environment. The sustainable work environment is in combining these three together, and very often, this is something that needs to be made clear at the beginning of a project, and so we always start with a vision exercise in which we ask the management team okay, so these are your values, but how can your work environment reinforce these values? Please make a link between these two, and we often see that for them it's very difficult, because they're sitting in the huge office and they have their own parking space and and they have their own sometimes their own elevator, but uh, uh, on the floor, people are working and people have needs, and people need to be uh in an optimal way as supported, to be able to do the job in in a good way, and and so you see a big it's often a big gap, because I guess it's lack of direct experience, isn't it so?
Marc Curtis:good leaders listen to their reports, to their people, and will empathize and hopefully even will have direct experience. I guess, on the flip side, bad leaders sit, as you say, in their nice offices, potentially, or somewhere else, and because they don't have the direct experience of some of the challenges that the people that work for them have, it becomes more of an intellectual argument, you know, or an intellectual experience. So you're telling me this while I'm telling you that you know, and then get annoyed when perhaps the thing that they're saying about the thing that they've been told, doesn't translate into real feelings or real behavior change. Just going, sort of circling back. And I'm conscious of time, I don't want to take up too much of your time this morning, but I am interested to just talk a little bit about the shift towards flex work and hybrid work. I mean, this is one of the two great topics, I would say, of the last few years.
Marc Curtis:Two questions, I guess. One is is it here to stay? Are we, you know? Is this it now, you know? Has the way that we work changed, you know, irrevocably? And secondly, what's happening with companies now? Are companies trying to return to a pre-pandemic way of working. We're certainly seeing a little bit of that in America. It's been mixed up with wokeness and I don't want to talk about what's going on over there, necessarily but it certainly gets mixed up with all of that. So are companies recognising the value? Value of it or are they trying to move away from it and is it here to stay?
Anton Maes:I think. I think Completely going back to how it was before is not possible and not wanted, because we give a lot of freedom to our workers and, as I said in the beginning of this podcast, they also need that freedom because they have a different kind of work than they had before. They have to be able to improvise, to do innovative things, to work together, to collaborate, and for this you need a new setting. So I think that the hybrid working provides a good context for this more creative kind of working, as the traditional jobs administrative jobs, et cetera are mostly disappearing, so they're being replaced. You said just this morning how ChatGPT is helping us out today. True, and this will only accelerate. So providing a big, open environment, big landscape office with people that are there from eight to six working on I don't know on calculations, this will disappear quite quickly. So will it disappear? No, will we find a new equilibrium? Yes, we will have to find a new balance, because I think that it has gone a bit to the other side and maybe a bit too far.
Anton Maes:And we see a lot of organizations today and we mostly work in Belgium, but still I also hear internationally organizations start to feel that people are less connected to the organization and, because they're away too long, they don't have enough informal check-in with colleagues and they don't feel part of the team anymore.
Anton Maes:Um so, and not only they don't feel part of the team anymore, but they are not connected anymore to the vision and values of the bigger organization. So, and and this is this is a huge risk I think in the beginning of the pandemic, uh, there was this kind of weird optimism saying, yeah, work, it will change forever and it will never go back to the old situation. I think it was a bit idealistic in a weird way, because personally, I saw the disadvantages of this really quickly in my own team 12 people always working from a distance. Very quickly I realized that I had to invest in team building, bringing people back together, bringing them back into one room because they were just getting detached. So, on a larger scale, big customers, big organizations, are feeling this today and are trying to roll back the hybrid work.
Marc Curtis:And I'm actually quite interested to know. So what did you do specifically with your 12 people then? What rules or what routines have you put around that, then, to ensure that you do have a functioning team?
Anton Maes:Well, first of all, I make sure that there's clear communication on who is in the office and who is not. So this is something no surprises. I mean, every week we fill in some kind of schedule to make sure that people know if I'm going to the office, who will I see there.
Anton Maes:That's the first aspect. And the second aspect is my own presence as a manager and also the presence of my senior experts and consultants. I want them to be present because if they're not present, I see that younger people say, yeah, well, I'm not going to your office because there's nobody there. I have questions, and then they, very quickly, will start to try to organize this online, where I want them to be physically together. So these are two aspects.
Anton Maes:A third action is organizing very regular team building, and I know before, 10 years ago, team building it was rowing on a river with the team and eating waffles in the Ardennes. Today, team building is back. It's back and it's become much more important than before, and it costs money, but I think it's it's. It's become much more important than before and it it costs money, but it's it. I think it's worth every every euro, right? Uh, because, for example, if you organize this kind of exercise first, okay, you do something, you go out together, you do I don't know you go, go for a walk, but you always combine it with learning, you want to add content, you want to make sure that again, there's an added value of coming together and and linking this to the team spirit and to to the team experience. So these are three things that I did, but of course we're a very small company it's it.
Marc Curtis:It is fascinating actually. I mean, you know, I'm, I have a kind of a waking nightmare through my life of the words team and building, because you immediately, you know, puts you in mind of you know some, some horrendous activity. And I fully accept, by the way, that that is very much related to my own personality and misandry and my you know, my horror sometimes of being stuck in social situations, because I'm, I struggle with social situations quite often stuck in social situations, because I struggle with social situations quite often.
Marc Curtis:In that respect, zoom and Teams has been an absolute winner for me, because names appear under people's faces. Number one, which is amazing. And secondly, you know, it reduces the need for small talk, which is something, a skill that I've always struggled with. Having said that, I absolutely, I can absolutely understand what you're saying, that I think now that now that we we have to put in place moments or opportunities for this, that that, yeah, team building is sort of enjoying a renaissance, right it's. It's no longer the kind of the fluffy thing that we used to do longer, the kind of the fluffy thing that we used to do. It's now become an essential part of trying to create a company culture or trying to create a sense of you know of, of collection, you know collective, you know direction. I suppose.
Anton Maes:Very, very much, and I'm quite happy that this is now going on and that I'm not sure that all organizations are already seeing it, but we have to work, organize, work in a different way, in a new way. It's an opportunity. This is an opportunity. There's one other aspect for a bigger organization that's extremely important, and that is I already mentioned it it's the leadership aspect and, for example and this is also something that in the past was quite fluffy, but I think it's back and that's the creation of a leadership community Making sure that people who have a leadership role know each other, exchange information together and think together on how can we develop our organization. 20 years ago, you went to some kind of management drink on Friday evening and there was a free bar and it was all very silly. But today, I think and I don't know if this is really happening in some organizations I see some initiatives, but we should invest in building these communities in our organization, making sure that leaders exchange competences and exchange experiences, because this newer generation needs them.
Marc Curtis:And exchange people as well. I mean, if you're looking at internal mobility, I think I mean it's only just occurred to me as you're speaking, but of course you're absolutely right. I think if you're coming into an office every day, if you're meeting with your colleagues, if your bosses are meeting with other bosses, then they will inevitably have conversations about oh, I've got this guy. You know he's been with us for a year. He's getting a little. You know he's up again. You know he's learned all he's going to learn.
Marc Curtis:Maybe he should come and talk, you know, and I wonder, and I wonder how much that suffered as another unintended consequence of a more distributed nature of work.
Anton Maes:Yeah, it's, it's, it has a very high impact. And a second aspect on leadership is the leadership role that's shifting because, um, doing team schools, as you, uh, as you illustrated there on your own, your own behavior and and on your own social skills, marc, I don't experience you like, like, like you said, but but okay, I understand what you said. Um, the team's calls are very good for the manager because, as a manager, in a manager role, I need to organize, I need to plan, I will give you deadlines, I will go through objectives, I will go through an action plan, etc. This is very easy for me.
Anton Maes:But a coach, for example, try coaching somebody over with a headphone on your head and try to to. Yesterday I had a colleague who was in tears, uh, due to circumstances, nothing to do with me, but just I was coaching her, I was trying to listen to her and I was trying to give her some advice. She was with me in a meeting room. It's very hard to do with a headphone on your head in a team's call, and so coaching becomes important.
Anton Maes:Third aspect is the whole leadership as being the person, the charismatic person that talks about vision when are we going? That talks about motivating people. This is the direction the organization wants to go, and you will all follow me Again try this via Teams Very hard. And a fourth aspect, and that's, I think, related to the management community, is the whole entrepreneurial role of a, of a leader. I mean, you have to innovate, you have to discover new business again, you have to meet people to do this, you have to go to lunch meetings, you have to see presentations on other projects, et cetera. So is hybrid working here to stay? Yes, will it evolve? Yes, will it ask investments? Yes, we cannot just leave it like it is.
Marc Curtis:And I think the one thing that's very clear from what you've been saying, to sum up, I guess is that this stuff doesn't happen accidentally.
Anton Maes:No.
Marc Curtis:There has to be intent, there has to be a vision. You have to engage senior leadership, senior management, the people who are actually working. You have to think about the environment. You have to think about the interpersonal conversations. You need to think about the environment, you have to think about the interpersonal conversations. You need to think about knowledge exchange. You need to put guardrails, you need to put a framework around it, and all of this I mean that's an undertaking right, because that's, you know, I mean, I guess, not to want to sound like an advert for you and your services that's change management, right. Those are all the different components you need to think about.
Anton Maes:Exactly in your services. That's change management right. That's those are all the different components you need to think about exactly, but first, first of all, the realization by the management team that, uh, they have to do something, uh, the whole, uh, I laissez faire, as I say in french, uh, that's, that's not an option yeah, and I well.
Marc Curtis:I guess the first problem to the first step in solving a problem is to recognize you have a problem in the first place, right?
Anton Maes:yeah, yeah, and and and uh. Invest in people, invest in leadership, invest in your work environment. Um, and not just put the ping pong table uh in the cafeteria. I mean that will not make the difference. I think that's I, I think.
Marc Curtis:I think that's um, that's an excellent point at which to sum up. I think you're absolutely right. Providing a food truck or a ping pong table does not a good working environment make. Anton really enjoyed this chat, by the way, and I feel like it's a sort of conversation that could go on for some more time. I'd like to ask one question at the end.
Marc Curtis:I don't know whether you've listened to any of these podcasts yet, but the one question I always like to ask is, as a pioneer yourself and that's the that's the whole point of this podcast is to talk to people who are doing things you know first, or doing things in a different way than others in in the world of work. But as a pioneer, who? Who do you look to? Who has inspired you, either from a professional perspective or from a on a personal basis? But who do you find inspiring? And it can be living or dead. It can be somebody who's out there now. It could be somebody who runs a company that you've, you know, an inspiring leader that you've worked with, or it could be, um, it could be an author or an academic. Up to you. Entirely sorry to put you on the spot.
Anton Maes:I should have I should have pre-warned you on this question no, no, no, I, I, I mean, I, I I think of two people. Um, the first one is is a really traditional answer.
Anton Maes:Uh, that is uh, jp cotter uh jp cotter was the founder, and, and and the guy who developed the change management theory for the last 40 years, professor at Harvard, really smart guy. And he's the guy that said change is a process, it's not an event. And this is something I'm saying every day, about 20 times a day in every meeting, because that's how it is and I said it in the beginning change is a process. We have to go step by step, every step in the right direction, and we're going forward. And it might seem that we're not going forward, but as long as we're taking steps, it will be okay, and so that's my big inspiration. On the other hand, my biggest inspiration would be Leonard Cohen.
Marc Curtis:I was hoping it was going to relate to. For those of you who who haven't seen a clip of of this podcast, I can tell you that anton is um currently sitting in a room which has, I mean, I just in just in view of the camera. I can see about a dozen guitars um, mostly acoustic, I'm guessing.
Anton Maes:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm mostly an acoustic player. I have some electric guitars also, but I think that Leonard Cohen, the big power that he has is his poetry, of course, and his poetic way in which he looks at the world around him. And I think he's also a Buddhist. You know him and uh, and, and I think what he's. He's also a buddhist, you know, um, and he he also one of his.
Anton Maes:He said in one of his songs, um, that there is a crack in everything. Uh, but that is how the light comes in. Uh, and I love this because, um, he describes life as as some kind of a vase, and in this vase there's a crack and, okay, you could see, oh, this vase is cracked, it's worth nothing anymore because it's broken. It's not the perfect vase anymore, but the crack just gives the added value because when you're inside, I mean, there's light in the vase. So it's very Buddhistic, but also a very beautiful way of putting this. Very buddhistic but also a very beautiful way of of of putting this. Um. I think that that, uh, disruption is extremely important for business, and doing the same thing over and over again will not lead to change well, it's the definition of madness, isn't it?
Anton Maes:that's the difference exactly. There's a different definition of madness. So we have to disrupt, to to advance, and I often say this to my to my younger colleagues. They come back from a meeting and they're maybe demotivated or they may be a bit mad because things didn't go as they wished, or the customer was was asking difficult questions or whatever. But I'm always saying to them look, uh, I mean if, if we just continue doing what we always did, we will never make any advancement. So we need this disruption, we need a crack in the vase.
Marc Curtis:Brilliant. I think that's a perfect point to end this With pleasure, anton, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for that, and I love the idea and I'm absolutely going to steal the broken vase. Now that's going to come back around to you. You're going to meet somebody. It's like have you met Marc Curtis? He just never shuts up about that. The broken vase. You know you can go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know but do you know the song, marc?
Anton Maes:did you, did you I don't.
Marc Curtis:I'll be completely honest with you. I'm not that familiar with Leonard Cohen, although I think we are roughly similar age. I think you were. You went down a much more laudable music education route, whereas I was listening to Morrissey and the Smiths yeah, but that's a whole that's. That's a different podcast, I feel yeah, yeah.
Marc Curtis:Anton, thank you so much for taking the time today. I've really enjoyed our talk and I'm very much looking forward to hearing you again at our conference on the 5th of June, which, for those people who are listening to this before June the 5th, there are still tickets available. Anton will be one of our speakers and I think we also got you on a panel discussion as well about the return to the office as well. But for now, anton, thank you very much for taking the time and looking forward to talking to you again soon. It was my pleasure.
Anton Maes:Thank you very much, marc the time and looking forward to talking to you again soon. It was my pleasure. Thank you very much, Marc. Thank you for the opportunity and goodbye.
Marc Curtis:Very grateful there to Anton spending so much time with me this morning, really enjoyed that conversation with Anton. I know I say that after every podcast that we do, but genuinely I think he's a fascinating character. He's clearly and, as I say, if you see a clip of this, the video clip, you'll see that he's very into his music as well. Anton told me after we finished recording that he had to actually consciously limit the amount of music references that he made throughout the conversation that we had, but I think he managed to get at least three in there. As I say, though, really interesting, interesting, some really great topics as well.
Marc Curtis:I think any business, really that's, that's struggling with understanding the impact of flex work, of the return to the office, and this is something that we struggle with. Well, not struggle, but you know, look, it's, it's. It's a constant, it's a constant challenge. You, you need to balance the needs of your teams. You want to be flexible, you want to give people a certain amount of freedom. I strongly believe that if you want to get the best out of your co-workers and your teams, you need to be as flexible as possible, but then there has to be guardrails around that, there has to be rules, there has to be policies. You need to balance those policies with providing the the right environment, the right equipment, the right um, the right tools, um, and that's why I was very interested to, to hear from um, to hear from anton, all about um, activity-based workspaces and and how that fits into the great picture.
Marc Curtis:And this is something, again, as I say that we've and I alluded to this in the podcast that um that we are, that we're testing out in in our brussels office as well, um, and it's been really interesting. We're learning a lot as we go. Um, have we got it 100 right? No, I don't think we have. And and to, to paraphrase um anton, I don't think that conversation or that journey is ever finished. Change management is not, as he said, an event, it's a process. So, thank you again, anton, looking forward to hearing him talk at the Future of Work conference on the 5th of June in Brussels. And until the next time, thank you very much for listening. Goodbye you.
