Change at Work

In her speech about work, Leslie Perlow explains how to thrive in an overconnected world. The ethnographer and Harvard Business School professor shares two studies she conducted about the way people work.

The first study was on engineers in different countries that were equally productive. They did the same work differently, indicating interaction was the variable and where potential lay. The second study asked if a group could change the way they worked. The speech about work states change is possible.

The speaker encourages people to try to change at the collective level instead of spending time and energy trying to figure out how to accommodate the world we live in. This is about owning time as a group. Perlow also found the power of bringing personal lives in was "the catalyst to rethink work." Therefore, the key to change at work is for a team to rally around a collective goal of personal value because it unleashes a process that creates better work and lives.