Work Will Kill Us All with Josh Allan Dykstra

Leaders and HR teams have spent decades investing in engagement, well-being, and culture, and most of that effort still hasn’t made work better for most people. In this episode, futurist and author Josh Allan Dykstra explains why.

He traces the problem past people, leaders, and organizations to the larger story that shapes how work operates: the belief that greed is good and more is always better. You will learn why well-being programs lose funding when budgets tighten, why most workplace interventions target individuals instead of systems, how to question the assumption that every company must keep growing, and how AI could eliminate drudgery instead of only cutting headcount.

Josh also gives leaders practical steps they can take inside their current organization. His new book, Work Will Kill Us All: An Optimist’s Guide to the Future, is available November 11.

Buy the book: https://tinyurl.com/jucd9spt

Learn more about the book: https://joshallan.com/book/

Connect with Josh: https://joshallan.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshallan/

Key Takeaways

• Work is the organizing story of most people’s lives, shaping where they live, when they wake up, and how much free time and money they have.
• Many workplace problems are symptoms of a deeper story that values growth, profit, and more above everything else.
• Research consistently shows that investing in people pays off, but those returns show up over years and decades, while most companies are measured quarter to quarter.
• Leaders who try to improve work are often fighting a system and its incentives more than they are fighting other leaders.
• Between 70 and 90 percent of workplace well-being interventions focus on individuals, such as mindfulness and stress management, rather than systems like workload, incentives, and norms.
• Leaders have the most influence over systems, which makes systems the real work of leadership.
• Growing forever is a choice, and a company can decide to stay its current size and focus on being excellent for its people and customers.
• A better question to ask about AI is what work humans should no longer have to do, so it removes drudgery instead of simply speeding everything up.
• Wisdom requires space, so leaders should avoid letting AI fill every hour it frees up.
• Josh proposes a commons, where the things people need to live are owned in common and kept off limits to the profit motive.

Timestamps
02:05 – Why an optimist about work wrote a book with such a dark title
02:25 – What a failed startup revealed about why work stays bad
07:58 – What an organizing story is and how work controls daily life
12:39 – Why engagement and well-being programs rarely get lasting support
17:02 – Why investors ignore evidence that people drive performance
20:35 – How leaders can shift from fixing individuals to fixing systems
24:16 – Questioning the belief that companies must grow or die
28:17 – Using AI to remove drudgery instead of cutting jobs
32:38 – Moving past the capitalism versus socialism debate
39:07 – Practical first steps for leaders who want to make work better

Keywords
future of work, why work is broken, systems thinking for leaders, employee well-being programs, employee engagement, AI and the future of jobs, workplace culture, human capital ROI, leadership and organizational change, burnout at work