Episode 296 · 28 April 2026 · 59:23
Why has $5 Trillion NVIDIA scrapped performance reviews? PLUS! Microsoft’s voluntary retirement, well-being hacks and the truth about the change curve, with Matt Furness
Featuring Matt Furness
Why has $5 Trillion NVIDIA scrapped performance reviews? PLUS! Microsoft’s voluntary retirement, well-being hacks and the truth about the change curve, with Matt Furness
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Microsoft's voluntary retirement programme
news roundup#microsoft#retirement#voluntary-retirement#workforce-planning
Is Microsoft encouraging older workers to leave?
news roundup#microsoft#age-discrimination#older-workers#retirement
Jensen Huang's radical rules at NVIDIA
news roundup#nvidia#jensen-huang#leadership#management
The wellbeing investment you're overlooking
news roundup#wellbeing#employee-wellbeing#investment#hr
Truth or Lie — The Kübler-Ross Change Curve, with Matt Furness
truth or lie#change-management#kubler-ross#change-curve#truth-or-lie
Workplace Surgery — Quiet quitting after a return-to-office mandate
workplace surgery#quiet-quitting#return-to-office#remote-work#workplace
Workplace Surgery — The toxic high performer
workplace surgery#toxic-employee#high-performer#sales#management
Workplace Surgery — Small business culture vs. £15k pay rise
workplace surgery#small-business#company-culture#salary#career
Outro / What's coming up
Show notes
Why Did $5 Trillion NVIDIA Scrap Performance Reviews? — with Matt Furness
Guest: Matt Furness — Business Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist, founder of Click Culture.
NVIDIA just crossed the $5 trillion mark. Microsoft just launched a voluntary retirement programme. And somewhere in between, your favourite workplace podcast is asking whether the most famous model in change management is actually a load of rubbish.
Al and Leanne are joined by Matt Furness to put the Kübler-Ross Change Curve on trial. Spoiler: it's not looking good for the five neat stages we've all been drawing on whiteboards for decades. Matt explains where the model actually came from, why it fails as a predictive tool, and what to use instead when you're trying to help people through workplace change.
Plus, they unpack NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's radical management rules — 55 direct reports, identical bonuses, and zero one-to-ones — and ask whether Microsoft's "voluntary" retirement offer is a kindness or a very clever rebrand of something much blunter.
🔥 Stories Covered
1. Is Microsoft quietly pushing older workers out the door? Microsoft has launched a first-of-its-kind voluntary retirement programme for US employees whose age plus years of service equals 70 or more. Open to staff at senior director level and below, it comes as the company pivots hard toward AI infrastructure. Al and Leanne dig into whether this is genuine employee choice or a "very clever rebrand" of something more transactional — and what it means for the 7% of the US workforce who might be eligible. Source →
2. The $5 trillion CEO: Jensen Huang's radical rules NVIDIA's CEO has 55 direct reports — nearly 10x the corporate average. He pays all 55 top executives the exact same cash bonus to kill internal "status games." And he never does one-to-ones, sharing information with everyone at once to eliminate power asymmetry. Al and Leanne break down which of these rules are genius, which are NVIDIA-specific, and what a flat structure actually costs. Source →
3. The wellbeing investment you're overlooking Gym memberships and meditation apps are nice. But the data says employee development is the real driver of wellbeing. Research suggests low engagement is often a "progress problem," not a "perks problem" — and 73% of employees would stay longer if their company invested more in learning and development. Leanne ties it back to Self-Determination Theory: competence is a core human need, and it's directly linked to lower burnout. Source →
🧠 Truth or Lie: The Kübler-Ross Change Curve
Matt Furness joins the pod to put the "Stages of Grief" model — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — on trial. The verdict? It's a lie, in the sense that it's an idea that sounds right but doesn't survive contact with the evidence.
Matt explains where the model actually came from (a study of terminally ill patients, not employees), why it fails as a predictive tool, and why we keep reaching for it anyway — because, like astrology, it's vague enough to feel true. He offers a more evidence-based alternative for understanding how people actually respond to change, and why resistance is often a rational response to a poorly managed transition.
Connect with Matt:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matthewfurness
- Click Culture: clickculture.co.uk
💬 Workplace Surgery
Three listener questions, tackled live:
- Quiet quitting after RTO: "My company mandated a full return to the office 8 months ago and I've checked out. Am I quiet quitting?"
- The toxic high performer: "I've got a salesperson who brings in a huge chunk of our revenue, but they're widely seen as toxic. Can I justify keeping them?"
- Small business culture vs. cash: "I tell myself culture and mission count for something. But if someone offered me £15k more, would I stay?"
(Got a question? Submit it via the connect link below.)
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottComing up this week in work.
Leanne ElliottMicrosoft have just launched a one-time retirement programme targeting employees whose age plus years of service equals 70 or more. They're calling it voluntary, giving people the option to leave on their own terms. But is this genuinely a choice, or is it a sneaky way of reshaping the workforce?
Al ElliottI'm a bit concerned about that. I'm pretty sure I'm on 100 if you add those 2 things up. What if everything you knew about managing people is completely wrong? What if you didn't have one-to-ones? What if there wasn't identical pay for everyone at the top? And what if you didn't have 55 direct reports? I mean, this sounds like a complete disaster, doesn't it? Well, the CEO running this system just hit a valuation of $5 trillion. Yes, with a T, $5 trillion. So maybe he knows something the rest of us don't.
Leanne ElliottAnd in Truth or Lie, the Kübler-Ross change curve, 5 neat stages that supposedly explain how people move through grief or major change. But does the research actually back it up? Well, we have got a very special guest leading us through the research, Matt Furness, business psychologist and founder of Cliq.
Al ElliottAnd in the workplace surgery, one small business owner is losing good people to bigger companies who are offering more money and better benefits. They're starting to wonder, at what point is culture a genuine differentiator?
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner. And I'm here to ask the questions you might be afraid to.
Leanne ElliottAnd my name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and I'm here to answer them. And together we help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottIf you've listened before, have a guess what I'm about to say. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. Yes, you were right. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hello, welcome back, welcome back. Well, by the way, um, if you're listening, Richard, I have seen your email. I'm so sorry, it was sunny over the weekend, um, there was beer in the fridge. I sat and I should have answered your email, but instead I read a really rubbish book on, on my Kindle and drank a few beers. So sorry, I will get back, get back to you, I promise, because he sent a really nice email. Do you remember he sent it last week saying that he's knocked out? Yes. Well, he's now sent an email. He said basically you should— this person should play you in the, in the biopic. And I was expecting, you know, that weird guy from, um, From Afterlife, the one with glasses and the beard who goes, oh, I know. But it wasn't, it was a really good-looking guy.
Leanne ElliottSo. Well, you are a good-looking guy, my love.
Al ElliottAs my mother used to say, a face perfect for podcasts. Anyway, Lee, what else is going on?
Leanne ElliottHello. Well, speaking of Richard, for anyone who didn't listen last week and you're wondering what the heck we're talking about, we've got a lovely listener and upcoming guest called Richard Clark, and he was telling us about how much he loves Truth and Lies. It's actually knocked Adam Grant off his podcast listen list, and I found this very, very exciting until this morning.
Al ElliottOh no.
Leanne ElliottBecause I think Adam got wind of this.
Al ElliottHe's a listener. I know that. I know that much.
Leanne ElliottI think Adam heard this and was like, right, well, I'm, I'm gonna have to like up my game if I'm gonna get Richard back as a listener. And do you know what he's done?
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottHe's started another podcast.
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's called The Curiosity Shop. But you know what Adam has done?
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottHe's taken from our format, Al. He's got himself a co-host. Do you know who that co-host is?
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottBrené Brown.
Al ElliottOh, for God's sake.
Leanne ElliottWe're screwed. Richard, we wish you well. Good luck. I'll see you over there.
Al ElliottYeah. Oh, God. It's like one of those things you just go, sigh. Okay. Subscribe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, screw you, Adam. Actually, again, hoping I don't get clipped. Like last week, I was clipped saying, Steve Jobs came on stage. Hoping I don't get clipped saying screw you, Adam, because that's not— that's— we take a huge amount of inspiration from him. We also— Yeah, we do.
Matt FurnessWe do.
Leanne ElliottWe've also been clipped I've been campaigning to get him on the show for quite some time. So come on, Adam, sort it out.
Al ElliottAdam, tell me, is your podcast the number one podcast in management in the UK?
Leanne ElliottIt's not right now, Al, because we are. Thank you, everyone.
Al ElliottThank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to that person who I spoke to and said, how can I, what can I do to, to make your podcast better, to help? And I said, well, you could probably just—
Leanne ElliottListen to it.
Al ElliottYeah. I just said, I said, just, just, just press, just press play and play all our episodes over and over again for the next 3 weeks.
Leanne ElliottIncluding the ads.
Al ElliottIncluding the ads. And I believe they've done that. So.
Leanne ElliottThank you for that. Yeah, no, thank you everyone. So yeah, no, I haven't listened to it yet, but it was actually Dr. Hayley Lewis who was saying how much she very much enjoyed the new podcast, Curiosity Shop.
Al ElliottHow dare you?
Leanne ElliottWell, she's not contractually bound to only like ours.
Al ElliottListen, she's whatever it's called bound, friendship bound.
Leanne ElliottWe don't hold our friends to that. No, we want more good podcasts in the world. It's just really hard to take when it's some 2 very heavy hitters that are in your category. But I'll go listen. I'll report back next week. I have a feeling I'm gonna like it.
Al ElliottTalking of reporting, Leanne, I think it's time for your favourite—
Leanne ElliottNo, I've got something else for you. I've got something else for you.
Al ElliottIn case anyone wondered whether this was scripted or rehearsed, no, clearly not. What have you got, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottSo, right, you know Simon Squibb?
Al ElliottOh, the potato—
Matt Furnesswhat?
Al ElliottNo.
Leanne ElliottHave you got a dream?
Al ElliottOh, is he the stepladder guy? The ladder guy? No. Tell me who Simon Squibb is.
Leanne ElliottThe career ladder guy. I love that guy.
Al ElliottNo, tell me who Simon Squibb is.
Leanne ElliottYou know Simon Squibb. You got his book.
Al ElliottBritish guy.
Leanne ElliottDo you have a dream?
Al ElliottOh yes, he'd built a weird little thing with a staircase or something.
Leanne ElliottDo you know what? I have no idea what Simon Sinek has actually done other than he's a successful entrepreneur.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottWho now asks people if they have a dream and he tries to help them, which I admire, but he kind of sometimes comes across as a little bit arrogant.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottA little bit pushy. We all need a bit of a push from time to time. But I saw this and it's the most cringeworthy video I've seen.
Matt FurnessOh no.
Leanne ElliottFor some time. So I'm going to play it to you and I want you to know what you think. Okay.
Al ElliottYeah, we're going to do it the proper way. We'll— I'll edit it in, or you're just going to play it through your microphone?
Leanne ElliottNo, I'm just going to play it through my microphone. It's easier, isn't it? Easier in post.
Al ElliottTerrible.
Matt FurnessExcuse me, get off your phone. I've got an important question to ask you. What's your dream?
Leanne ElliottLiving my dream.
Matt FurnessAre you? How are you living it? What is it? Nice truck, by the way.
Al ElliottThanks.
Leanne ElliottI'm writing books, making podcasts, helping the world.
Al ElliottLiving my dream.
Matt FurnessI've got 15 million followers online. I could help you out. I know it's hard to get a book out there and people might not have heard of it. What's the name of your book?
Leanne ElliottUh, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
Matt FurnessOkay.
Al ElliottI'm sorry.
Leanne ElliottHe just—
Al ElliottMark, Mark, Mark, was it his gold? Yes.
Matt FurnessOh no.
Al ElliottAnd he didn't recognize him.
Leanne ElliottHe did not recognize him. Yeah.
Al ElliottMark, Mark Manson. Manson. Marilyn's brother. Yeah. Oh my God. Oh, that's awkward.
Leanne ElliottWait for it. Wait for it.
Matt FurnessThat is quite a well-known book. What's the number one thing you can teach people about not giving a fuck?
Al ElliottWhat do you think it is? Well, the way to not give a fuck about something is to find something more important to give a fuck about.
Matt FurnessHave you got time to come on my podcast and like break down exactly what you mean?
Leanne ElliottOh, now it turns out, I think this was a— this was like a promo jokey video because he now is on his podcast. But I just— but I have also seen him do it other times. I saw him do it to a woman who was sat reading a children's book to her daughter. And he was just like, what's this book? You know, why don't you write your own book if this is what you're into? And she's like, it is my book.
Al ElliottAmazing.
Leanne ElliottAnd worse than that, it was like some kind of brilliant NGO that's like helping kids all over the world to read and stuff. So I thought that was really cringe and I wanted to share it. Can you imagine going up to somebody If it was real. I have a feeling it wasn't. It could have been.
Al ElliottWe were talking about this the other night that, you know, you see, you see a street busker doing a bit of Teddy Swims, like, cover, and then Teddy Swims happens to walk by because he's on his way to go and post a letter or something, post Malone a letter. And he's— and you're like, come on now. And there's like, would you like to— would you like to sing? And he's like, yeah, go on, I'll give it a go. And it's like, oh man.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it is funny though. It's happened to me only once. When I was— and quite recently actually, you know, I went back for that, um, what's it called, baby shower.
Al ElliottOh yeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd ended up going out with, with a friend and having too many cocktails.
Al ElliottHello, Laura.
Leanne ElliottHi, Laura. Um, but I was— there was a guy who was a friend who was chatting up my friend because she's single and fabulous. So I was just basically like just spare-wheeling at that point. So I was chatting to him, he was just like— I was like, what do you do? And he started telling me about how he's a chef and how he's had to make some really big life adjustments because it's a very stressful job and He experienced a lot of anxiety and blah, blah, blah. So he actually now just recently cut down his hours and he's focusing more on the type of food he wants to cook and the type of impact he wants to have in terms of sustainability, blah, blah, blah. And probably talking for about 10 minutes. Oh, that's really interesting. And I'm like, what do you do? I was like, I'm a psychologist. He was like, oh.
Al ElliottOh no.
Leanne ElliottAm I doing the right thing? I was like, dude, I don't know. I've only just met you, but yeah, it sounds good. Good for you.
Al ElliottWhen I first met Leanne on our very first date, I've said this to the pod before, very first date, I started explaining to Leanne what I just learned about body language. And she's like, yeah, I know, I'm a psychologist. And I was like, ah, fuck.
Leanne ElliottIt wasn't that. He said, what do you do? And I was like, I'm studying my master's in organizational psychology.
Al ElliottAnd you went, oh no. Leanne, what have you seen? Oh, so we need to do a jingle. Let's do a jingle.
Leanne ElliottYeah, cue the jingle, Al. Time for the news roundup, my favorite time of the week.
Al ElliottYay. Okay, cue the jingle, cue the jingle. Leanne, what have you seen?
Leanne ElliottIs Microsoft encouraging older workers to leave?
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottYeah, probs. That's what I saw.
Al ElliottEncouraging, definitely encouraging spouses of CEOs CEOs and owners to leave. But behind you, that sounds like it might be a darker thing that's going to come out than wash. So leave that alone. Microsoft and their workers.
Leanne ElliottWe'll circle back to that.
Al ElliottWe'll leave that on an island on its own. Maybe. Okay.
Leanne ElliottI need to give a shout out to Maureen Wiley Clough.
Al ElliottWhat a name, Maureen.
Leanne ElliottSo many great names out there.
Al ElliottMo, love your name.
Leanne ElliottMaureen, I saw this on LinkedIn. She posted about this and I went and found the original article from CNBC and it's Basically about how Microsoft is currently managing its workforce, workforce given the rise of AI.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottSo the company is launching a one-time retirement programme. It's the first of its kind, and it is aimed at very specific employees. It's open to US staff at senior director level and below, where their age plus years of service adds up to 70 or more. So clearly targeting long-tenure More experienced, they say. Let's be honest, older employees.
Al ElliottHold on. Does the maths work there? Because if I'm 40 and I've been working for Microsoft likely for 20 years, that's not me. Oh, now I get it.
Leanne ElliottYou get it? That penny just dropped, my friend.
Al ElliottDid you actually hear the penny drop? Oh, I see. So we're talking 50 is basically what we're saying. Is that right? Okay.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottI love how real-time listeners Got to see how stupid I was. And by the way, I did a maths degree. Okay, carry on.
Leanne ElliottSo around 7% of the US workforce could be eligible, although that figure hasn't been formally confirmed. Microsoft says the intention is to give people the option to leave on their own terms with company support rather than forcing redundancies. Eligible employees will receive more details apparently in early May, and notably those on Sales incentive plans won't be included.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottOh, those clever, pesky little senior executives there. The people that are bringing in the revenue won't be affected. Nice. At the same time, the company is making a separate change to how people are rewarded. So Microsoft are decoupling stock awards from cash bonuses in its annual performance process, which apparently gives managers more flexibility to reward high performers. It's also apparently simplifying performance reviews and reducing the number of pay options that managers can choose from. But of course, all this is happening against the context of a backdrop of AI. So Microsoft, like the rest of the tech sector, is heavily investing in AI infrastructure and data centres, while parts of the traditional software workforce are facing disruption. On the surface, yeah, it's a voluntary programme. You know, it gives people control. But if we step back, I think there's some bigger questions, Al, and I'm not sure at this point you're gonna be that surprised by what.
Matt FurnessYeah.
Leanne ElliottThey are.
Al ElliottYep.
Leanne ElliottIs this a way of just reshaping the workforce in a way that targeted— targets older employees? And if the company does do that, what institutional knowledge are we gonna lose from our senior members of staff? And more importantly, what does this say about the value of older employees in the world of work?
Matt FurnessThoughts?
Al ElliottThis immediately sounds like someone in marketing has got involved in this because this is a very clever rebrand of voluntary retirement.
Matt FurnessMm-hmm.
Al ElliottThis is all it is, is saying, do you want, do you wanna retire? Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. And it's just, but what, what is quite clever about it is that it makes people, first of all, it's very specific. So it talks to a very specific type of person, even though it doesn't. It's very clever because it actually, you can actually go, oh, actually it does, does You know, a range of people. So it's that. Secondly, it makes people realize how long they've spent there, which is a clever way of doing it. Yeah, I have put in 25 years. Maybe it is time that that I went and become a goose farmer, which is what that that fabulous CV on well resume or whatever you want to call it bio on LinkedIn, and he's got like someone who was at Microsoft for 26 years, and he's like, and then you just see all these positions they took. So like head of this, head of that, VP of this. VP of that, senior VP of this, and then it just said goose farmer. Basically gone, I've had enough. You know, you know that meme where it's got the— it's got the guy who just throws all the papers on the floor and goes, F this shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and thirdly, does it get round the legalities of saying we want to get rid of everyone who's over the age of 50?
Leanne ElliottWell, I guess it must have in the US for them to be able to put it in place anyway.
Al ElliottSee, now what's interesting about people who do— I'm sure a lot of people know this, but, um, uh, Bill Gates Dad was a lawyer. And so you can tell a big Bill Gates— Bill Gates' dad was a lawyer was because when you used to get the Microsoft pack of disks, floppy disks, 3.5-inch hard disk drives, 3.5-inch disks, you used to open it and it had a sticker on there going, by opening this packet, you accept all our terms and conditions. You didn't have to tick anything. You basically, as soon as you ripped open that packet, you were— Microsoft had you.
Leanne ElliottOwned you.
Al ElliottOwned you. And I think this is a kind of similar thing where they've gone very clever going, uh, I'm just gonna— anyway, sorry, what will you tell us what really is going on rather than my just rambles?
Leanne ElliottI, I think what you've said, it's what my concern is, because on paper it's like, yeah, this for some people, this could be a really great thing. It could be that people are thinking about being goose farmers.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBut don't have necessarily the funds, and this payout could give them the resources and means and runway that they need to go and pursue their dream and their meaningful work now they are in the later stage of their career. But there is going to be probably a larger percentage of people who are quite happy in their job because this isn't like— this is below senior or senior director and below. So it's not like the super high levels. It's those people that have reached a level they're comfortable with, are enjoying their work. And let's be honest, if you work for a company like Microsoft, there's a huge part of their identity, particularly you've been with the company for a number of years, probably in this case at 10+. So I just worry that actually for those people, there's not going to be any wraparound care in terms of how you're actually going to manage this, because there's a long way to go between 50 and proper retirement, especially these days. So I don't think it's actually a bad idea, but I would feel more— I'd feel more reassured if this was opened out as more of a voluntary redundancy programme rather than voluntary retirement. I think it gives a very clear message of what tech companies think of older employees. And I think I'd also be much more reassured if this was part of something bigger in terms of wraparound— what is meaningful work to you, coaching type, is it entrepreneurialism, is it that you've, you've smashed your, you know, your savings, you can actually afford to, afford to retire at 52. I just think it's sending out some messages, and the real concern for me is that Microsoft is is a key tech company, isn't it, that leads the way. I can see this rippling in other organisations doing this. And essentially what it is, is a very clever way of getting rid of people 50, 55 plus.
Al ElliottDo you know what, as you were saying that, I was just thinking, wouldn't it be— maybe it'll be fun, maybe stupid, but maybe it'd be fun if you just went, instead of saying this, you go, if anyone's over the age of 50 and they've thought about doing something different. So for example, Bill Gates does support a lot of like ecological Yeah. Um, things and say, you wanna do something that's around the environment, something that's around like, um, farming, whatever. If you send in your pitch, then we will fund your first 2 years on that, on that venture, for example. Probably the same as giving them the voluntary retirement, but it, again, it's reframing it to be something like, how about we support your dreams rather than how about you get the hell outta my office so that I can replace you with the With an agent that costs about $4 a month.
Leanne ElliottAnd the key difference there is that messaging in terms of, can we help you move on to your— the next stage of your career? That suggests that we believe you still have a huge amount of value to offer potentially Microsoft or the wider, you know, world. But this is basically as an underlying sentiment of we don't think you have any value. So if, if these numbers add up to 70, if you could just move on now, please, that'd be great. And that's why I just think it's a bit iffy.
Al ElliottFair enough. Fair enough. We should have got Sean O'Shea in to talk about this. Sean's, Sean's an upcoming guest and a really cool guy on LinkedIn and also worked for Microsoft, I think for 8 years under Ballmer. And then I always forget the new Microsoft CEO's name. I forget his name. But anyway, he worked under them both.
Leanne ElliottSo interesting.
Al ElliottMaybe we'll talk about that on his interview.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And also go and check out Maureen on the old LinkedIn. I'll leave a link in her show notes. She also has a newsletter that talks about issues impacting mid-late careers. It's called It Gets Late Early.
Al ElliottOh, that's clever.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo I like that.
Leanne ElliottSo go to itgetslateearly.com to subscribe to her newsletter and podcast.
Al ElliottGo and find out more about her, about Momo mid-late career. Okay. So I want to talk about something I've seen, which also includes a huge, huge company. So let me tell you what's happened. So this CEO pays his top executives the exact same dollar amount. It's the same people for 55, 50, same amount for 55 people. This company crossed $5 trillion in market cap on Friday.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Al ElliottSo I think a lot of people listening will go, well, this has gotta be NVIDIA and it is NVIDIA. So I saw this, uh, I saw this on, um, on Twitter, Twitter, Twix, X, whatever it's called, uh, by someone who—
Leanne ElliottHell.
Al ElliottHell, I enjoy— it's funny, I enjoy Twitter. LinkedIn, can't quite get into it. But anyway, this guy's called Akash Gupta. Um, really, really— I don't know whether he's big on AI. I don't know if he uses AI to write his posts, but they're so engaging. So this is very relevant to the LinkedIn Live that's coming out this Friday, which is all about AI and writing.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottDefinitely listen out for that. It's a really, really interesting LinkedIn Live, about sort of 70 minutes with some really, really clever people on there. But anyway, that's not what I'm here to talk about.
Leanne ElliottSo get to the point, Al. Come on, we've all got things to do.
Al ElliottJensen Huang, right?
Leanne ElliottOkay.
Al ElliottI hope I'm saying his name. Basically, he's got the 7 things that this, this tweet suggests that they do at NVIDIA. First of all, he pays all top 55 executives exactly the same amount. So every single one of them get the same $1.5 million cash bonus. No negotiation, no pecking order. That's it.
Leanne ElliottHe's got $1.5 million cash bonus. So they're on different salaries or?
Al ElliottOoh, great. Do you know what? I should have researched that. I do not have that information to hand. I, I, I, I inferred that they all took home the same amount of money. Okay.
Leanne ElliottLet's infer that then.
Al ElliottLet's, let's, yeah. So that's my implication. As a listener, that's your inference. So the beauty of that though is that they're saying there's no negotiation, there's no pecking order, there's no one, oh, he pays, she gets more than me.
Leanne ElliottNot finance is worth more than HR kind of thing.
Al ElliottExactly. He also, of these 20, of these 55, bear in mind, these are 55 people who talk directly to him. Now it does sound a bit chaotic because most sort of like companies of this size have 10 SVPs or ESVPs, whatever. And then it goes down the ladder. Microsoft, for example, they've probably got 10 layers of management to get to him. Not anymore though.
Leanne ElliottBecause you know, they're gonna, that number's gonna be 70.
Al ElliottBut NVIDIA, Has almost a flat company now. Just in case anyone's not heard of NVIDIA, then they are, they make the chips that AI runs on. So the majority of AI data centers buy NVIDIA chips.
Leanne ElliottBusiness must be good.
Al ElliottBusiness is very fucking good. Very, very flipping good. So number 3, he never does one-to-ones. He doesn't sort of pop by and have a catch-up. If he has something to say, 55 people join a call and they hear it all the same time. Sounds brutal, but then you think, well, actually, You know what Jensen said because he said it to all at the same time. Um, he doesn't do performance reviews. Um, he just doesn't do it. He just does an annual review document. There's no structured feedback process. His system is the meeting, apparently, according to this. Uh, so you know how you're doing because you're doing the work in front of everyone and everyone he knows.
Matt FurnessMm-hmm.
Al ElliottUm, and then I'll just pick one other. Um, he said he spends almost zero time managing his executives. Now, this is important because the average Fortune 500 CEO is probably gonna spend between 30 and 40% of the week on executive overheads. That's your one-to-ones, that's your comp reviews, that's your mediating who said what. Jensen runs the same headcount with essentially none of that. Leigh, is this madness?
Leanne ElliottIt's interesting, isn't it, that Mark Zuckerberg is having to clone himself to be able to spend enough time with his people? Talked about that last week, didn't we? Um, and sorry, what's this dude's name?
Al ElliottUh, Jensen Huang.
Leanne ElliottJensen. And Jensen's taking a very different approach. What do I like about it? I like the same pay. Everyone's giving equal value here, whatever vertical it is that you're in, so you're all paid the same. Let's not argue about that because that's the stuff that people argue about and get in civil about. So I like that. Um, I think there can be too much time spent on overly formal performance reviews. I'd like to see what that annual one looks like and whether these kind of all-hands meetings he has actually speaks to individual potentially, whether it be priorities or drivers or whether they're all the same. My overall feeling is that in a cash-rich company, you can afford for one or two people who are very high paying to mess up a little bit and not matter so much. So I wonder whether actually in a different climate for this company, a different stage of its growth, things might shift. And I think we've seen this from so many tech companies before who will invest and invest and invest, and then, you know, things will decline and they'll make mass layoffs, or they'll, you know, you'll hear of big names getting, getting, um, laid off and stuff. So I think while the sun is shining, you can make hay, and it sounds like this is what Jensen's doing. I think, yeah, there's some bits to it. There's some things I question. I certainly wouldn't recommend a business owner with You know, who isn't what, got a trillion dollar—
Al Elliott$5 trillion.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I wouldn't recommend they do it because it's not, it's not the same scenario. But I think what I do enjoy is pay transparency, pay equality, and not spending too much time on performance reviews. If you've got that trust in your people and there's ways of measuring it, you shouldn't necessarily need to performance review them. That's very different from checking in and having conversations about how things are going and do support, any help. So yeah, they're my thoughts. Not very well organized, Al.
Al ElliottI like it. I like it. Well, I'll organize them in post-production. I think the last thing to say on this, just before we go into Leanne's final article, is that, is that I think a lot of companies, a lot of people in that, in NVIDIA, and also probably a lot of the executives are vested, meaning they've got shares in the company. I think it's something like Oh God, could you imagine? I think, I think honestly there are more paper millionaires in the employees of NVIDIA than there are in any other company in the world, which is kind of incredible. But anyway, Leanne, we are high on time. So tell me, what else have you seen?
Leanne ElliottHigh on time and low on—
Al ElliottFuck, no, energy. I was about to say, you know how we've already used the F word here? Well, we didn't, but science did.
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah.
Al ElliottSo what have you seen, my love? What have you seen?
Leanne ElliottUm, what else have I seen? Wellbeing. Are companies actually missing the one wellbeing investment that actually works? I'll answer this for you. Yes.
Al ElliottExcellent. Tell us what it is.
Leanne ElliottTime for the truth or lie. Now, it came from a publication called Wellbeing, which unsurprisingly is about wellbeing. According to this article, most organisations focus their wellbeing spend on things like, you know, Al, gym memberships, your mental health apps, maybe if they're progressive flexible working, that's all useful. But this article argues that the most overlooked investment is— drum roll please— employee development.
Al ElliottOkay.
Leanne ElliottWhat do I call employee development, Al?
Al ElliottOh God, recognition? Yeah.
Leanne ElliottDo you remember me saying, I can't remember if it was the beginning of this year or the latter end of last year, I was like, recognition is going to be huge in the next 12 months, man.
Al ElliottRecognition's so hot right now.
Leanne ElliottSo hot right now. Basically giving people the chance to learn, grow, and build their skills in the role. And this article did call on some pretty fancy data. Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026 report puts global engagement at just 20%, with an estimated $10 trillion loss in productivity.
Matt FurnessOof.
Leanne ElliottYeah, that's almost, it's almost as much as NVIDIA's getting, isn't it?
Al ElliottThat's double what NVIDIA's getting.
Leanne ElliottThe article is basically saying it isn't— this isn't about perks, this is about work design.
Matt FurnessYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd then it brings in some psychology. So they said that self-determination theory identifies 3 core needs at work: autonomy, relatedness, and competence, and highlights that competence, that feeling of getting better at something, is directly linked to higher engagement, better performance, and lower burnout. Yes, it is, because that symptom of burnout, which we don't talk about as often as like exhaustion, is low self-efficacy, which is a feeling that we're competent in doing our own job. So their point is development is a core driver of well-being. If we look at some retention data points as well, they talk about the Talent LMS 2026 report that found that 73% of employees would stay longer if their company invested more in learning development. 73%!
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottSo Paycor's analysis also shows that organisations with strong learning Cultures typically have a 57% retention rate versus 27% in those without.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottAnd financially, the article claims that companies invest in training see more than double the income per employee and higher profit margins. So what do we think, Al? Is recognition really hot right now?
Al ElliottYes, 100%. It always is. I mean, there's this— the 7— there's 7 base— there's 7 basic foundations of an amazing workplace culture. Reason, role, relationships, relate, resources, resilience, remote, and of course, recognition. That's in the RX7, which is something Leanne has designed and also writing a book on.
Matt FurnessNo, no.
Al ElliottOh, I just made a hyperventilate. So yes, 100%. Absolutely 100%.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's so important. We've heard of this from, um, in terms of growth hunting, which Gen Z are doing. We know from other surveys that only really about 40% of organisations actually develop structured development programmes for their people. It seems like a really obvious thing we've been doing to not only help performance and retention, but also well-being, because it does— it's such a buffer to burnout if we feel competent and confident in doing our job well. I will leave a link to that in the show notes. Al is telling me we need to move on quick-like.
Al ElliottI'm giving you— I'm giving you the sign. They do it. Yes. If there was music, I'd be playing at the end of the Oscars. Okay. Right. We will go for a very short break. On the way back, we are gonna be, we've been stopping by a lovely gentleman called Matt who's gonna be telling us about his truth or lie. We'll see you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way.
Al ElliottThat's us.
Matt FurnessYeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Matt FurnessAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Matt FurnessUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Matt FurnessIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Matt FurnessDefinitely come back, because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out.
Matt FurnessKeep that in.
Al ElliottWelcome back to Truth or Lie. You know what I'm about to say. It's that time of the week where we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up. This week, Leanne can take a bit of a break.
Leanne ElliottPhew!
Al ElliottWe've got a special guest who's going to take us through the whole thing. Matt Furness, or Furness, is a business psychologist, a behavioural scientist, and a founder of Clique, which is a behavioural science consultancy with over a decade of experience helping organisations work through exactly this kind of culture and change challenge.
Leanne ElliottYeah, Matt is pretty awesome. If you follow him on LinkedIn, you'll know that he posts about this kind of stuff all the time in his BSci BS series. Not entirely sure which came first, BS Eye or Truth and Lie. We'll just agree it's a great idea and we're both smashing it. Matt is talking us through the Kübler-Ross change curve, and I know you've heard of this before. It's often referred to as the stages of grief, so that's shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. It is laid out in a nice little arc, explains how people move through grief or major change. It did interestingly start as a model for understanding how terminally ill patients process a diagnosis, and somewhere along the way got picked up by the business world as a map for how employees experience change. But does the research actually back it up? Matt, over to you.
Matt FurnessSo, my name is Matt Furness. By background, I'm a business psychologist and behaviour scientist. For just over a decade now, I've supported organisations from pretty much every sector to develop their leaders, their people, and their culture. I've worked with organizations like Primark and BDO and Accenture and EY and Société Générale. And as you can tell, I still haven't quite nailed the French accent. In 2023, I left my big boy job at EY to set up Cliq. Cliq are a behavior science consultancy who specialize in people and culture development. And The mission of the organization is to turn this kind of work from something that is currently maybe seen by the outside world as being soft and fluffy into something that even the CFO raves about. That's what I'm trying to do with all my work.
Al ElliottSo, you are here this week to help us with our truth or lie. Now, I've got a little bit of an inkling about what you're going to talk about, but this is my layman's sort of way of putting it, is that I think we've all heard of these 5 stages of grieving where you go through anger and denial and depression and bargaining, I think it is. Now, I've heard that it's kind of similar for almost any kind of significant change in, in a person's life, particularly at work. Obviously, that's just the layperson's idea. So, Matt, can you tell us what is the idea and where did it actually come from?
Matt FurnessYeah. So, so the stages of grief, otherwise known as the change curve, Originally comes from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's work. So Kübler-Ross was a Swiss psychiatrist, and a few decades ago she was studying how people responded once they found out that they were facing a terminal illness. And based on her observations, she argued that people would follow the same predictable pattern. And what she noticed is that people went through denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression, then acceptance. And then what happened was quite interesting. So in the 1980s and 1990s, management consultants around the world found the model, took it, adapted it, and essentially used it as a model to explain how people would respond to change. So that's changing, you know, your daily life, but also when responding to organizational change. Since then, it has found its way into thousands of PowerPoint decks, leadership programs, pop culture, and it's trotted out whenever people push back to change or are facing change, and it's used as an explanation for their psychological responses. And admittedly, early in my career, I talked about it in workshops, right? But ultimately, it all came from Kübler-Ross's research of how do people respond when they have just found out that they have a terminal illness.
Al ElliottFirst of all, I'm massively schooled because I thought it was all— I thought it was just death, just dealing with a death. So this is interesting. What do you— what evidence is there for this idea and against this idea, Matt?
Matt FurnessOften change does lead to denial and resistance, right? And when there have been reviews, resistance has been a common response. So for example, in 2011, researchers across Israel, Greece, and the USA conducted a review. They took 79 studies, all that looked at how people responded to different types of change. And these studies spanned 60 years. And they did find that resistance was, it was pretty common as a response, as were some of the other phases that Kübler-Ross mentioned. But that's kind of it in terms of the evidence for it. There's a lot more evidence against it. So those who actually test the stages more comprehensively have given far less favorable evidence. So For example, there was a study in 1989 by researchers called Wortmann and Silver, and there was another one in 2007 by— I'm not even going to try and pronounce this researcher's name, but they both found that essentially there was no support for the idea that people would respond in the same universal predictable sequence, never mind when in grief or when dying. Also, just in any type of change, right? So many people didn't go through those phases at all. And that's kind of a showstopper for a model that is built entirely on stages. So essentially, what they actually found was that people's responses to change would vary depending on a million and one things. So some of it would come down to your personality and how you are viewing the change, and then some of it would come down to the change itself and the organizational context. And how well that change is being led and whether leaders are communicating about it well, how much guidance you have and things like that. But essentially, I would say there's far more evidence against that model than there is for it.
Al ElliottSo, Matt, I understand this and I am genuinely surprised that everyone doesn't react this way because I'm using my own life. I find myself when something goes away or a big change happens, I almost like go, oh, I'm in this stage. of these 5 stages. Is that just because I've heard of it and I think, oh, this must be happening?
Matt FurnessI think I would say 2 points here. The first point is, and this is why I think things like astrology are very common, because it's very easy to read something that's broad enough and then to notice things in your life or things that you are feeling, and then You almost end up confirming this point of view. The second thing I would say is, what I'm certainly not saying is that people never follow this sequence. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross noticed that this sequence was perhaps a common one. So I'm certainly not saying that people never follow this sequence. So it could be that when you're going through certain changes in your life, Maybe that is the sequences you're going through. I think the danger, however, is mistaking a potential series of responses to change as the series of responses to changes. Just because sometimes we go through that response doesn't necessarily mean it's the most common, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the only way that people can respond to change.
Al ElliottI love it when I learn something new every day. Just like, by the way, I think, I think one of your LinkedIn posts about 21 days for forming a habit recently, which was brilliant. Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Okay. Anyway, we're not here to talk about habits. So tell me, what is the verdict, would you say? And also, I suppose the bigger question is, why does this even matter?
Matt FurnessSo I would say it's almost— if I had to say truth or lie, it's certainly a lie. I would say it's an idea that has not only been taken outside of the original context, but the evidence that we have suggests that it doesn't actually apply particularly well to the original context of of grief, never mind responses to organizational change. And in terms of why it matters, the most dangerous thing I believe about the change curve is the story that it tells managers and leaders leading change. It tells them, people hate change. Resistance is inevitable. You just have to sort of get through this phase. The phase of resistance and denial. And so what it does is it shifts attention away from designing and leading change with skill. So resistance essentially gets medicalized as an emotional phase to be endured, not something that you can actually probably sometimes avoid altogether with much better change design. So, in that regard, the change curve, I think, can just become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I also believe that the Kübler-Ross change curve maybe survives because it makes resistance feel inevitable. So, it turns something that could be our fault because we haven't led change well, or we haven't designed change with skill. Into something that's just human nature, which can't be your fault as a leader. So, quite a popular idea, I think, and one that is quite reassuring. Also, because it's a lovely, simple series of stages, and you can draw it up as a nice, simple graph, and it simplifies complex human responses into something that can easily be understood, and who doesn't love that? So, Essentially, I think it's definitely a lie. It's dangerous because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I think the reason it's got traction is because it tells us the story we want to hear, and it makes human beings a lot more simple than they actually truly are. But ultimately, if we want to lead change more effectively and help people transition, I really think we've got to drop this myth.
Leanne ElliottThat was a brilliant Matt Furness. Thank you so much, Matt. I just want to add that I agree with everything you've said. I'm with you. It's oversimplified. It doesn't work that way. I do sometimes use it as a vocabulary more for myself in terms of how I'm feeling through change to try and understand where I'm at. Not that I think I'm moving through them in a linear way, but do you know what I mean? It gives you a vocabulary. So I guess, I don't know, is that fair?
Al ElliottNo, that's really fair. That's really fair. We've used it as well, which regular listeners will know that we are going through some slight challenges at the moment. Nothing like major or nothing major to us, but—
Leanne ElliottPickles.
Al ElliottPickles that we're trying to get ourselves out of. And we do, and I do quite often say as the layperson, oh, I think I'm in this, in this particular thing. So yeah, I think it's important to remember that, yes, it's not mapped one-to-one. So you can't expect an organisation to follow this roadmap of like, this is how they're going to react. At the same time, it is a very sensible and useful way to say, I am at this stage.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottWhich also helps you realise that you're actually moving towards the end.
Leanne ElliottThis too shall pass.
Al ElliottThis too shall pass. Go and jump onto clickculture.co.uk. Fabulous web— really, really sexy website. Also, if you go into the about page, Matt's animated his signature. I don't think it's a real signature, but he's animated his signature.
Leanne ElliottI hope it's not his real signature.
Al ElliottThat would be foolish. Yes, go and check out Matt. Um, go follow him on LinkedIn. Um, absolutely wonderful, wonderful human being. Okay, on to the world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. I have 3 questions. Question number 1, this person writes, and I love this, I've checked out, but I'm still here. I love this.
Leanne ElliottIt's most of our listeners, I think, at this point.
Al ElliottI've checked out, but I'm doing the hiding. My company mandated a full return to the office about 8 months ago. At the time, I pushed back internally and found it frustrating, but now I've just stopped. I turn up, I do my job, but I feel completely disconnected from it. I'm not looking to leave. The job market's tough and I've got a mortgage, but mentally I've checked out the way I haven't before. Is this just what work becomes when people feel forced into decisions they don't agree with?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottWow. Well, if only we had a psychologist in the room who specialised in organisational psychology to answer that question.
Matt FurnessLee.
Leanne ElliottThat's exactly what happens. You're, you're what the media call quiet quitting. You're disengaging from your work, and most people are. Was it 80% of people are disengaged according to Gallup's latest report that we heard on? It's, it's short-sighted. This is where I, I really lose patience with kind of full return to office mandates without any real genuine substance or reasoning behind it, which I'm guessing you didn't get because you found it frustrating. So, this is a point where you go, all right, well, like you say, you're disconnected from it. You're not looking to leave because the job market's on fire. You've got a mortgage to pay for, and that's exactly what's happened. Time and time again across history, whenever we get these cycles, and the minute that the economy bounces back, like after COVID, we see things like the Great Resignation. Everybody leaves their jobs. So you are just biding your time until the market picks up and you can do that, because clearly you are disengaged and disconnected from this organisation. That's just the way it is. Advice I would give you to get through this in a way that doesn't really damage your mental health: find your meaning somewhere else. If you're not getting it from work, Yeah. Where can you derive that meaning from right now? Whether it be your family, your community, doing some voluntary work, a hobby. You need something in your life that feels like you're doing something with purpose and meaning. If you're not getting it from work, find it somewhere else. The other thing I would say is that over time, just to keep an eye on this, the longer you're in an organisation where you're disengaged, where— which is a symptom of burnout if it prolongs, that detachment from work—
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThat has values and beliefs that are opposite to your own, which it clearly does around flexible working or remote working as an option. This dissonance between what you believe and what the organisation believes is going to start to cause you real strain, and that's going to start pushing other symptoms of burnout, including cynicism and potentially exhaustion as well. So, keep an eye. It's not that you can't sit tight, but you can sit tight for a period of time before it starts to have an impact. So, look after yourself, eat well, get your movements in, spend lots of time with family and friends where you can, find your joy, and just wait for the market to pick up.
Al ElliottI love this. That's such good advice. And also, what's weird is that we've been doing what, we're almost up to 300 episodes now. And then you were saying, yes, and what you're going to find is, and in my head, the word cynicism popped up right at the front of my head. I'm like, I bet she's going to say cynicism. And she did. She did. Fabulous.
Leanne ElliottI think you could answer these at this point, love. You've listened to enough of them.
Al ElliottNo, because every time you answer them, and I'm not just, I'm not just saying this, genuinely, every time you answer them, I'm like, oh, good point. I hadn't thought of that. So no, absolutely, I could not do that because I have no letters after my name, nor am I very important. But I am important in this next question because I have to read the question. So this person is asking, can I justify keeping a toxic top performer?
Leanne ElliottNo.
Al ElliottIt's— do you know what's interesting is we do get asked this question probably once every 6 months.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd I think that people give a different justification each time, and then you, you just basically go, no.
Leanne ElliottIt's like they just want to check again, isn't it? Like, are you sure we can't just No. Okay. Okay.
Al ElliottSo this person says, I've got a salesperson who brings in a huge chunk of our revenue, but they're widely seen as difficult to work with. They're talking over people, they're taking credit and making others feel small. We've lost a few good people over the last year. I'm sure we'll come to that. And this person has come up in exit conversations. Again, we will come back to that. The honest truth is the business relies on the revenue they bring, so I've been putting off dealing with it. Is there ever a case for protecting performance over culture? In the short term, please say yes, Leanne, please say yes. And they've written, please say yes, yes, yes, I really need this person to stay. Oh, sit down, get a cup of tea, get a digestive. And no, you'll need a hobnob for this.
Leanne ElliottYou'll need a choc hobnob. Yeah. Is there a case protecting performance over culture in the short term? Maybe, but not in this situation because you're not protecting performance, you're tanking performance. Because you've lost several great people. This person is taking credit, making others feel small, talking over people. This is real incivility, which can very quickly turn into potentially bullying and harassment. He comes up in exit conversations. This is a problem. This is a real, real problem. You've got a serious toxic superstar on your hands. Was it Ryan Sherman off of Hogan that told us that To replace the performance of a toxic superstar, you need 3 superstars in their place. And it sounds like you've already lost 3.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo you are, believe it or not, it seems intangible. I understand that this person is bringing in X amount in revenue. You are losing far, far more, far, far, far more. Because as well, if you take a stand and this person either is coached through this, and that is the approach that you should take, you should at least be having this conversation with this person in terms of maybe they're not aware of it, maybe they don't realize Maybe they know full well what they're doing. Either way, you need to manage that by having that conversation initially. But imagine if it went down the road where this person knows what they're doing, they are just a toxic individual, they don't have a place in your organisation anymore. The morale boost that's going to give to the rest of the team, so that as an owner, as a leader, you're saying, this is not acceptable. My people deserve better than being treated by this, by anyone.
Matt FurnessYeah.
Leanne Elliottanyone, no matter how much money they bring into the organisation, that uptick you're going to get in morale and performance, I think it will knock your socks off. I really do. So, I think at this point, you've reached the end of the road. You've lost good people over the past year. I can only imagine how— in fact, you know what? I wonder if, you know, the person who checked out in the previous question, that's how everybody is feeling in your organisation right now.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottSo, the risk you are taking, if the market, if and when the market picks up, You could see a whole wave of people leaving, which is gonna cripple your business. You have to act now. You have to act now.
Al ElliottThere you go. There you go. And also, um, I put the Al in practicality. I'm gonna give you a couple of practical, um, practical things I think that you should, you could be doing right now. Do you record your sales calls? If you don't, then introduce that to everyone. Everyone gets their sales calls recorded, uh, so that you can then, you know, the whole thing for quality and training purposes. But then you feed that to Claude and go, what does this person do that other people don't? Go and take that, train the other people in exactly what this person does. So there you go, there's your practicality. And then once you get rid of, get rid of this person, everyone else knows exactly what they did and what their secret was. Okay, so question number 3, when does culture stop becoming enough? Um, I run a small business. I'm losing good people to bigger companies who can offer more money, better benefits, and hybrid working policies I genuinely can't match. This is quite a common question we get.
Matt FurnessBrilliant.
Al ElliottI tell myself that culture and mission count for something, and I genuinely think they do. But if someone who works for me is offered $15,000 more elsewhere, it's really hard to compete with, we really care about you. I'm starting to feel like the whole small business family pitch is— oh, red flag, come back to that. I'm starting to feel like the whole small business family pitch is something I tell myself as much as them. At what point is culture a genuine differentiator, and at what point is it just a story you tell people you can't afford to pay properly?
Leanne ElliottOh, now that is the title of a great Oh, there's, there's so many little clues in this, isn't there?
Al ElliottYes. Lee, unpack like, like it's Christmas morning.
Leanne ElliottI wanna, I wanna just take a closer look at small business family pits.
Al ElliottYou might.
Leanne ElliottAnd, um, at what point is it just a story you tell people you can't afford to pay properly?
Al ElliottThought you might have picked up on that one too. Go on.
Leanne ElliottIt seems to me like There's something, right? I'd always take a look at the commercial, right? What is happening in your business model that you can't afford to pay people properly?
Matt FurnessMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottBecause something's going wrong. If your business is making the revenue it's meant to make with the expertise it's required, you should be able to afford to pay people properly. You know, this is something in your business model, something in your pricing and commercial decisions, or indeed you're— you've got people in roles that they're far overqualified for and you don't need that level of knowledge and skills. It, it, the, the roles that they're currently in. So, I'd look at the commercial aspect first of all. This screams to me like you're a mature startup scale-up. You've got to a point where people are pushing back on expectations to work a lot of hours for the same pay because we're a startup, we're a family. That puts the expectation on people to care as much as you do, and I'll be honest, at this point, they probably don't. Because they need more. As we've heard, they need— it's not always about the money either. Let's not joke ourselves on that. It's not just about the extra $15K, although of course for some people, especially with the, you know, what we're seeing at the moment with the cost of living crisis, that is a difference between being able to feed your family and not in a lot of cases. So, we do need to be mindful and sensitive to that. And you're right, you can't compete with that. But there are so many ways beyond finances that we can motivate people. In our business. Go back to our episode with Jake Tuber, who talked about the motivation of money. And yes, it is, but it loses its, its, its motivational pull at a certain level, and particularly when it's coupled with other things around recognition, as we've just heard.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottYou know, career development is massive. Giving people meaningful work. I mean, it's— are these people in a role that is stretching them, that feels that they have purpose in it, it's giving them meaning, that they have the right resources to do, they're clear on what their job is. All of these other things can support motivation within an organisation, particularly in a small business, and particularly in terms of development, because you can give people exposure to things that they never would anywhere else. And that's what I always loved working in small businesses. I was given— I was having conversations with, you know, very senior directors when I was 23.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottWhich I never would've been able to do in corporate. I would've been an intern getting the coffee. So, there's absolutely, in terms of exposure and development, a way you can invest in these people. But ultimately, I think this is a— I don't think this is that. I think you might need to adjust your expectations in terms of boundaries that people set themselves in terms of how hard they work. I think there's things you can do in terms of investing in their development. This feels to me like you've got people in roles that are overqualified to do them, or there's something in your business commercial model that isn't quite working right now. What do you think, Al?
Al ElliottYeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do exactly, yeah, pick up exactly what you just said there. So my prediction is that you are probably 3 to 4 years old. You started this business because you were good at something, not necessarily because you wanted to build a business. So you started a business because you were good at something and it scaled and it's doing really well. Uh, you probably up until the last 6, 8 months, you've done most of the work yourself, including the sales, the client delivery. You just brought people in back of house. You're probably on your 15th, the 14th or 15th employee, because that's when it starts to fracture and fragment. Um, and the fact you call yourself a small business makes me think that you're still thinking of yourself as a little scrappy startup.
Matt FurnessMm-hmm.
Al ElliottYou're now in teenage years. These are tough years. And you can no longer— what got you to here will not get you to there. Fine. If you wanna stay where you are, fine. But you are right. I think your margins are too— either your margins are too thin, you're not making enough profit, or you are making plenty of profit, but you're taking it all home yourself.
Matt FurnessMm-hmm.
Al ElliottBecause if you've got an established business that's doing well, then unless you're in something which is like cash and carry, where it's wholesale, where it's like my gross margins are 8%, You should be looking at decent gross margins and decent net margins. And if you're not, then your pricing is wrong, your business model is wrong, or you've just scaled too quickly. You've not got the right processes. So, um, I think fundamentally the first thing to look at is how do I get more money available so I can potentially offer someone, offer people more? You don't have to offer someone $15,000 to stay, but you can say, I cannot do $15,000. What we can do is I'll do $5,000. What you don't wanna be doing is exactly what you said at the bottom.
Matt FurnessYeah.
Al ElliottYou're creating a culture that is just a story that you tell people because you can't afford to pay them properly. And I know I'm missing—
Leanne ElliottNo one buys that story.
Al ElliottNo, nobody buys that story.
Leanne ElliottNo one.
Al ElliottIf you're the NHS or you're some NGO or something, you might get away with that, but not when you're a commercial entity.
Leanne ElliottYeah, but at the cost of burnout. That's what we see in, you know, NGOs in the charity sector, in the NHS especially. It's still, it's always gonna come at a price. The thing that I think there's some self-limiting beliefs here, I think you've nailed it in terms of they're still thinking like a small business and they've now got to a point where they're more mature. That you said, okay, can't offer more money. Okay, like we said, we need to look into that. Better benefits and hybrid working. In what world can you not offer people hybrid working?
Matt FurnessHmm.
Leanne ElliottAssuming you're a services-based business, because if you actually, if you really can't because they need to be on site, you wouldn't even mention hybrid working because where are they going that they can, you know, that's a different role entirely and you don't really even count that in your your turnover figures. So, why aren't you considering hybrid working? Why is flexible working such a hard no for you? Because it shouldn't be, really. Better benefits. Yeah, we've talked about organisations out there before that offer corporate-level benefits for a very affordable price, Perks being one of them. It's a few quid a month, and you're going to get corporate-level benefits. There are absolute things you can do to look into this, but I think really the first, and the reason I think Al and I are being so firm with you, Mm-hmm. Is that you need to do some introspection first in terms of why you are limiting yourself and your business in ways that don't seem to quite make sense, don't fit, and aren't reality. And I think you really need to think about where your business is at, where you realistically wanna take it, and with that, what it's gonna take to get them there, to get you there in terms of the people and how you treat them.
Al ElliottYeah. And I think being really frank, and I say this with a lot of love, but I think you have a small business mindset. Um, that you will go, we'll never make any money, we'll never be a big business, don't want to be a big business. Um, and it's probably how maybe you left another business because they were, they were really tight with money. I don't know, but there's something around the mindset there, I think, which, uh, which does need to change. And I say that with love, and I hope that, I hope that things work out. Lee, anything to add before we let these people go?
Leanne ElliottJust to say to come back next Thursday. Um, we've got a wonderful episode. Who's it with?
Al ElliottThomas Waits. Thomas Waits. So I've been looking forward to, to, to publishing this one for a long time. Thomas is an incredible sales trainer, incredible sales leader. Um, also has got a great story about where he, he basically walked into a company and made like about $1.5 trillion in 4 hours or something.
Leanne ElliottWow.
Al ElliottBut if you ever, if you wanna sell anything, now don't turn off for a second. If you wanna know how to be good at sales, you absolutely have to listen to this Thursday. It's not just for salespeople. It's not just for founders. It's for someone in HR who wants to sell an idea. It's for someone, a leader who wants to sell a better idea. Thomas doesn't just say, this is how you send out cold emails. Well, he doesn't say that actually, but this is how you send cold emails and this is how you get sales. He says, this is fundamentally how humans trust and buy an idea or a product from another per— from another human. Honestly, I feel a bit weird. I've been, I've been kind of weird about Thomas. I really have. He's such a good guy. And also, Bless him. I think we recorded this about 8 weeks ago because, because we've got a bit of a backlog and he's been so patient. He sent me a lovely email the other day going, Al, is this coming out? So yes, Thomas, it is coming out. It's coming out on Thursday. Honestly, it's going to be one of my favourite episodes of the year. I'm really looking forward to it.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's going to be brilliant. It's going to be brilliant. So come back for that. Friday as well, we've got a bonus episode going up on our LinkedIn. It was our LinkedIn Live that went out Today, actually, on AI and critical thinking. As I mentioned, it had a superb lineup of guests. So yeah, go check that out on Friday. Usual LinkedIn tag, message, chat, review. Any other words I can throw in there?
Al ElliottYou've used them all, Leanne. Bye.