THE NEW WORK PLAYBOOK

Most of what we consider to be leadership is about managing resources, not leading humans. AI is about to make that impossible to ignore.

The leadership practices that would actually make work better for us are not new. They've just never been trained and practised well enough.
Instead we focused on efficiency, control and output. That's management. Now that AI can handle all of that much better, what's left for us?

I think this is the defining question of our time.
Instead of asking if AI will replace leaders, we should ask whether we'll finally build the kind of leadership that deserves to stay.

The New Work Playbook is a podcast for anyone who believes that work gets better because people matter.

Main episodes explore why something matters for leadership in the age of AI. Reflection episodes give you actual practices to improve your leadership.

Interviews and conversations with people who already shape the future of work will come in to inspire and shift perspectives.

Hosted by Annett Burger, a practitioner with over twenty years of experience in executive search, leadership development, and consulting.

Play the latest episode Subscribe to the podcast

Latest episodes

The Culture Myth

‧ 26m 46s

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Peter Drucker never said or wrote it.
It became a popular claim anyway and we often read a good culture into it.
Read plainly, it doesn't say anything about which kind of culture beats a strategy.

This episode explores what that line actually claims, why the gap between stated and lived values is so common that most people read straight past culture statements.
I take a look at what happened after culture became a serious business topic in the 1980s and explore how Edgar Schein gave us a better understanding of how cultures form, transform,...

Purpose and Direction

‧ 14m 52s

This reflection episode turns purpose and direction into two practices you can start this week. The first is about sensegiving and sensemaking. Three questions that build the line of sight between one person's job and who their work actually serves, and what to do with their answers once you have them.
The second is direction. Five moves that give people guidance without you standing over them, from agreeing on what good looks like to protecting your team's focus from the noise around it.

Both come with a way of working out where to start. One job and one conversation for...

What on Earth is Purpose?

‧ 25m 10s

Ask people what meaningful work is and you get very different answers, yet most of us would take a pay cut for work that has more of it.
This episode is about that gap, why purpose stays so fuzzy, and why it matters more than ever.

I look at two of the most influential management thinkers.
Peter Drucker, whose ideas about good management got reduced to a numbers game and William Edwards Deming, who was ignored at home and listened to abroad, and what both reveal about why good management frameworks cannot fix bad leadership.

This episode shows you why...

Listen to Understand

‧ 14m 10s

What is the foundation to becoming a great listener?
This is the reflection episode following The Talking Reflex. It's designed to be practised, not just listened to.
You'll hear a difficult conversation twice. Once with a manager who performs all the right listening moves and misses everything that matters, and once with a manager who actually wants to understand.
The difference between them is the intention the manager came with.

From there we get into two practices you can start using this week.
The intention check, which is about catching what you really want from a conversation before it runs...

More episodes