A Job Done Well - Making Work Better

Season Two Finale

• Jimmy Barber and James Lawther • Season 2 • Episode 44

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This week marks the end of the second season, so James Lawther and Jimmy Barber have an extravaganza for you - well, it should at least be mildly entertaining! They share some of the highs and lows from the series, things that they've learned and a few of their vast catalogue of outtakes.

They'll be back for season 3 in September, so if you have any special requests on topics, questions or guests you'd like to hear from, then please get in touch with us. In the interim, they'll share some excerpts from their most popular episodes that you may have missed, so keep an eye out on LinkedIn, YouTube or TikTok for those.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us through Season 2.  

Got a question - get in touch. Click here.

Speaker:

Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy and welcome to a Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance enjoyment at work.

Jimmy:

Hi James. How you doing?

James:

I'm doing What you. Always fabulous.

Jimmy:

Were you fabulous in winter or is it just a summer? Fabulous.

James:

No, I think I'm fabulous all the time.

Jimmy:

That song out of high school. Musical called Fabulous. That should be your theme tune.

James:

I don't think

Jimmy:

Look it up, James. You won't know what I'm talking about, so today, James season finale.

James:

I absolutely, I'm looking forward to it. That means I'd have to talk to you for another six weeks.

Jimmy:

Excellent. Summer, summer off. If only that were true. I. Today we are going to cover in our season from some of the highlights and lowlights from this second season. And we are gonna share some of the outtakes.'cause we, have lots of them. Um,

James:

To be featuring disproportionately largely in this series of

Jimmy:

yes. You've,

James:

chosen,

Jimmy:

because I A,'cause I chose them. And B, because you've, you say things you shouldn't. And we also gonna share with you our plans for season three. So before we get into that, James, what have you been up to?

James:

That's not what I've been up to, is what I'm gonna get up to.

Jimmy:

Again? You do like to give like a preview of what's happening. See this is the thing. Last week, what were you up to? You were, uh, being an Oxford Don,

James:

Oh

Jimmy:

weren't you?

James:

I was,

Jimmy:

Anyhow.

James:

I went all the way to Oxford. Well, you look round. It's lovely. It's beautiful.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

fantastic. Great opportunity for anybody. Anyway, we got in the car on the way back, having driven three hours there and three hours back. said to my daughter, Sarah, what do you think? Do you want to go to Oxford? said, no. I why not? because they don't do the course. They do, doesn't offer a year abroad. I am

Jimmy:

He, he,

James:

well

Jimmy:

he didn't need to drive six hours to.

James:

drive Oxford and back to find that out. Did I? It says so on the internet, doesn't it? So,

Jimmy:

Oh

James:

hours of me, I've waited. Well, I did get to war out in colleges and very British. They worked too.

Jimmy:

yeah. Yeah, I bet. So what have you got coming up then, James?

James:

What I forgot coming up. Oh, well, it's a big weekend. is the first week. My, youngest daughter is going away for the weekend. My eldest daughter is away for the weekend. Mrs. Lo and I are going away for the weekend for the first time together in,

Jimmy:

Wow.

James:

I think 22 years.

Jimmy:

She is a lucky lady.

James:

She's really looking forward to

Jimmy:

I bet.

James:

it's gonna cost me a lot of money, so whether or not I'm still married this time next week, we'll see how it goes.

Jimmy:

Well, unfortunately, that that means that our listeners gonna have to wait till the next season See how you survive. That is the cliffhanger. That's it, James. Well done that. That will keep the audience coming back for more, won't it?

James:

So what have you been up to then?

Jimmy:

Well I've got a couple of

James:

you've got

Jimmy:

so I've got two things, work related things that may help people or not, a couple of habits I've just been building up. James. Now the, they both relate to water. The first one is I drink a pint of cold water before I have, I get going for the day before I have my breakfast or anything. And I have noticed that

James:

need to go to the loo.

Jimmy:

no, actually you do when when you first do it, you do. And then after about a week, you're all right. And I notice it really helps my energy through the day. Definitely makes a difference.

James:

Does it

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

of cold water?

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

It's Finn.

Jimmy:

one.

James:

crawl out of bed and think bloody hell. I need a coffee.

Jimmy:

Yeah. Before you have your coffee, James, you should try having a pot of water

James:

water.

Jimmy:

anyhow. Second one is have a shower every morning, the last bit of the shower, turn the water onto cold,

James:

Okay.

Jimmy:

cold.

James:

this isn't the same water you're drinking later.

Jimmy:

Not the drinking water. Definitely not turn the water on. Cold. 30 seconds. Cold shower. Two things there, James. First off,

James:

Cold. What is cold?

Jimmy:

freezing. It is absolutely Baltic.

James:

freezing. Yeah.

Jimmy:

after you, again, after you've been doing it for a couple of weeks, it's all good. Feels really good. Don't even notice it. Get out and you're far more alert for the, for the next hour, puts you on your A game. So there's a couple of hints. The reason why I've been able to build them into habits is because I listen to, uh, James clear's atomic habits and you attach them to another habit. So when I go downstairs and I take the dogs out first in the morning, I get a glass of water. I then, when I've having my shower, I just last 30 seconds on cold. So because I've attached it to another habit, it's ever easy to build up that habit. There you go. Water and how to build up habits,

James:

It's having very puritanical layer, isn't it?

Jimmy:

It does, it does work though. And it takes no time at all. Definitely makes a difference anyhow. Let's get started then, James. So we'll throw in some of the outtakes and we've got some of the clips of our, our highlights. But what's, uh, what's your first highlight?

James:

Well, I think overall for me, the highlight of this entire podcasting experience

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

just the opportunity it's given us to talk to lots of interesting people about lots of interesting subjects, which I know sounds a

Jimmy:

not each other obviously.

James:

know. But if we weren't doing the podcast, we wouldn't be able to do that. Well, we wouldn't have a reason to do that. So that, for me is the absolute standout highlight of the the entire thing. So. Let me give you an example. We had a chap on call, Frank Devine, who had been

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

at yeah, HR policies and procedures and how you could make them better. So here's a little clip from Frank,

Frank:

was the process all the time. Test create a hypothesis test against it. So predict. What you think should happen if the theory is correct, see what actually happened, learn from that, consolidate what worked, and then test through hypothesis and testing different approaches and by.

James:

yeah, so there's a word of wisdom from Frank. There is one of my, um, favorite moments. you?

Jimmy:

Well,, one of my, the highlights for me was a little bit similar. And it relates to guests, but I thought it was really good to talk about some important subjects that I hadn't really considered in my working life yet. They do impact lots of people, and here I'm thinking about, I. Talking to Lou Hines about grief recently and earlier in the year, talking to Steve CHUs about energy limiting conditions. And actually what struck me was how many people are impacted by these things and how little I and others talk about them and how they impact people's work. Here's a couple of clips to, highlight that.

James:

Just so let me. Quantify that. So about three million people. Plus Another what 12 million. So I'm talking circa maybe 15 million people who are on the

Steve Shutts:

talking about one in five in the country, you're talking about one in three in the working population.

James:

Yeah,

Jimmy:

and I think that's the thing is when you went through the list, Steve, of some of the ailments that people could be suffering from, there were things in there where you think, yeah, yeah, I know someone who has that. I know someone's that you mentioned long COVID. That's a good example. I mean, that's causing, you know, a massive issue and the numbers are growing as you rightly say.

Lou:

The person that comes back to work after that is not the same person that left prior to their bereavement. 23% of the UK adult working population will experience a bereavement in a given 12 month period, so that's a quarter of the workforce experiencing a significant loss. Over the course of a year, and that is just, you know, in that timeframe. What about all of the grieving people, all of the people who've had a loss? Two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, it still affects you.

Jimmy:

So it's, I say, James real eye-opener for me, you measured the impact versus how, how little these subjects are talked about in everyday life.

James:

Yeah. couple of talks.

Jimmy:

Yeah. What's your, what's your next highlight? James.

James:

Well, another one. So like-minded people. I've got to talk, not only did I talk to interesting people, but I've got to talk to like-minded people.

Jimmy:

Oh, you do, you do like anyone who agrees with you? Who have you picked out, who agreed with you?

James:

I've got two. First of all the world's cleverest computer.

Gemini:

James, it was lovely to talk to you. You asked such insightful questions.

James:

And

Jimmy:

New best friend.

James:

money is. I was listening to something the other day and they were saying how dangerous, it's to talk to AI apparently.'cause it tends to agree with you. Yeah. And then the other one, maybe slightly more mundane, but probably more my cup of tea is, uh, Mr. Smith.

Jimmy:

Ah, It's Hello, KPI, guru.

Bernie:

I actually keep a list of interesting KPIs. I know this is sad, isn't it?

James:

Jimmy is glazing over a list of interesting KPIs. No, no I mean these are

Jimmy:

It's like, what's your favorite Excel function? It's like.

Bernie:

Don't get me started. No. That's another episode,

Jimmy:

for the two of you.

James:

Hey, you're not joining us then?

Jimmy:

I'll sit, I'll sit that one out. Bernie does have, some great stories. That's, definitely an episode worth listening to.

James:

it is. He's, you know, how you go back and anything you really, if you've not listened to that one, you should do'cause fascinating things like, you know, how much pizza is flying into the White House at any one moment is a good indication of world stability. What else did you find interesting?

Jimmy:

I think the second thing was we, we saw some really popular episodes., All the episodes did pretty well, but there were a couple of standout ones. So, thank you to, a couple of our former colleagues actually Andy Warren and Vic Grimes, who had two of our most popular episodes. And, mainly thanks to the fact that they got competitive with each other, trying to, share it as extensive as they could, but they, really helped spread the word.

James:

Yes, thanks.

Jimmy:

And also I think for me, the other thing was really learning new stuff. So we got ourselves up on social media. So we had been promoting ourselves just on LinkedIn, but we branched out onto a YouTube and TikTok and you know, people have been very supportive on both those platforms. But it is just learning new things. I think as much as anything, and that's been a big feature of this podcast and journey for us, is whether it's the technology, AI to, to edit stuff or new platforms, we have learned a lot. So you can teach the old dog, New tricks.

James:

Yeah. Well, I learned something or it reinforced something, which I always thought about TikTok. So, which has been our most popular clip on TikTok. Do you know what the JD stands for in JD Vance?

Jimmy:

John, Derek?

James:

No! Justakilled Dapope, Justakilled Dapope Vance. I think as your jokes go, James. I think that's the XXXXXXX worst. You, you got, you. You dug the barrel. New levels to scrape XXXXXXX. Well I thought that was pretty good.

Jimmy:

it just goes to show the value of TikTok that the worst joke ever is our most popular, short, You are nearly TikTok famous James.

James:

I. am nearly TikTok famous. If you wanna be famous on TikTok, you just need to say something stupid.

Jimmy:

So what's, what's your next highlight, James?

James:

Well, I suppose actually working with Amanda has been great. So we've had them, our number one guest throughout the series has been Amanda Gilbert, who's been on, she's been on four five,

Jimmy:

For, I think for this series. And she, she was our top guest in the first series as well. So, yeah. Thank you for Amanda.

James:

recently. She's obviously got sick of us, but it's just a little bit of a clip of Amanda. So if you're listening, Amanda, thank you very much for your help this year.

amanda:

I'm okay with Fuddles. I think, James, you probably haven't been to ones that have been incredibly well managed. The best version, I think, is it's a great idea to bring a team together. Everyone contributes something. And, of course, remember to be inclusive. So, make sure there's some vegan options, etc.

Jimmy:

I think it, I think it's not that she's got sick of us, James, but we are working remotely now, so Amanda can't cook US cakes.

James:

But in terms of learning new things,

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

other stuff I've learned as well.

Jimmy:

Gone. What else have you learned?

James:

Well, so this was from the episode with Bernie. Sorry, look at the camera James. It's like–bleep– dealing with amateurs. They said to me the other day, you should never work with children, animals and Southerners. But you can't have it always, can you? Now. That I think was an insightful piece of learning for me.

Jimmy:

It might have been, but you haven't actually followed it yet, James. No, there's another cliffhanger. We won't be back for season three.

James:

because got divorced and B, no wants to work with him anymore.

Jimmy:

The the other things that I've learned, I thought were a couple of subjects that we. Research that maybe weren't experts at, but we wanted to cover. And that was about the importance of belonging. And actually when we did that, I kind of reflected back on how I felt I had or hadn't belonged to organizations and also getting in the state of flow.

James:

Yeah, and there are a couple of quotes which I think are quite good. So the one I like is Serena Williams, who has been known to say that when I'm in the zone, everything else disappears. It is just me and the task. It feels amazing.

Jimmy:

And another one was Steven Koler, who wrote The Riser Superman being completely absorbed by the, an activity you love to do where time disappears. That's flow. That's where the best work happens.

James:

Yeah, so there you go. So actually being projective and being happy. On the same thing. It's quite an interesting point, I think.

Jimmy:

I think you'll find to your quote James or well Serena Williamson's quote, it is something that a lot of sports people try and achieve because it is, when you do your best work and when you're at your happiest. In terms of top performance and enjoyment, there's loads of stuff in there that that I learned. And actually what I was conscious of is that it wasn't something that I had actively tried to get in Flow State. I just found myself in it. Every now and again throughout my working life now, I'm actually trying to plan in the blocks of work, set myself a target, get the lack of distractions, and then get in flow state. Doesn't make a big difference. So that is something that I, that we researched and learned about, covered in our podcast. And actually, I'm doing something different with it now.

James:

Very good. We are going to one or two of the outtakes now. Now this is something that I've got you that you haven't made, but just the ability to tell a new novel and interesting story all important when you're podcasting. So here is an example.

Jimmy:

Well, I, have a good friend who used to work in biscuits and he told me that well known type of biscuit were made from the scrapings off the floor at the end of each day Chuck. A bit of chocolate in jobs a good'n

James:

We've definitely done that story. before

Jimmy:

Well Well, known type of biscuit used to be my favorite biscuit before we did that story.

James:

We've definitely done that story. We have definitely done

Jimmy:

James you can't tell me you don't repeat stories expletive

James:

Well, yeah, but the well known type of biscuit one, that, one, that one will lodge in people's memories, mate.

Jimmy:

Well, all our stories about like our work experience don't lodge in people's memory, but

James:

But well known type of biscuit And another thing is, I'll end up having to bleep it out, won't I?

Jimmy:

Why could you, because you can't. say well known type of biscuit

James:

You'll have McVites coming after, you mate you, will

Jimmy:

James well known type of biscuit is not a McVities piece of ip. And you do, you do understand the concept of being able to be critical of something. Your risk appetite. Your risk appetite is zero. You can get well known tpe of biscuit Sainsbury's do it own brand well known type of biscuit That's, that's where I buy them.

James:

How you get well known type of biscuit American whiskey as well. It's

Jimmy:

No It's bourbon.

James:

I'm getting

Jimmy:

So it's not quite the, it's not quite the same. I fear we've digressed.

James:

Yeah, God almighty. And in terms of other things I've learned,

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

most important thing this hot weather all about the clothing that you've got. Well this week, uh, I have cracked open. It's been a bit hot,

Jimmy:

Yes.

James:

so I have got my thobe out to Mrs. Lawther's dismay. Do You know what? a thobe is A thobe I looked into it, I said, well, you know, it's so hot. Who knows about hot weather, to which the answer is the Arabs, you know, those,

Jimmy:

Yeah, yeah.

James:

shirty dress things they wear,

Jimmy:

No,

James:

they're called thobes And I've got one and I tell you it is, the most comfortable thing on a hot day. But Mrs. Lawther not very

Jimmy:

no. I can understand that. Please tell me There's some photos during the rounds of that.

James:

I've, um, I nearly went for the one with the, gold trim.'cause then I thought I'd look like an Arabian prince. Thoroughly Recommended for the hot weather.

Jimmy:

No, man. I can't believe you acted. Please tell me you didn't get outta the house with it. I will, I will cut the, I will cut this out, obviously, but I can't believe you wore one and you think that Mrs. Lawther was ever gonna sleep with you again. It's like that. That surely that's got to be the greatest contraceptive of all time.

James:

I, um, well, I'm, I'm 57 is a bit beyond worrying about that, but I I, had to go and pick my daughter up from the railway station. I went and put my shorts and my t-shirt on to drive down.'cause it would've been the one time I'd have had an accident, wouldn't it?

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

poncing around Central Nottingham in a phobe. But yeah, thoroughly

Jimmy:

they would. They would lock you up

James:

well, absolutely. She did suggest to me, I said, I said, I'm going, I'm gonna go out for a walk, and she, she said to me, are you gonna put a balaclava on before you go out so the neighbours don't recognise you?

Jimmy:

I still cannot believe that you announced that. The podcast.

James:

Did we actually, did you actually sent it out or

Jimmy:

James, we cut that out first time around, just so we could save it for the season final. You should have warned your phobe today. Well, James, any, uh, low lights from this season?

James:

Uh, only one. But it was a truly grown inducing moment.

Jimmy:

You'll be talking about where we had a guest and because the technology at the end of the recording, we say goodbye and the guest has to say, stay on, so that the, recording downloads and we forgot to tell one of our guests to stay on. So when we said goodbye,

James:

He hung up.

Jimmy:

they left.

James:

It took me about five hours to recover the files after that, but we did do it. So, um, Rob, if you're listening, you were the low light of our entire series

Rob:

We're not allowing our frontline people to do the thinking that the customers need. Let me give you an example. I was in a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. The waitress came over and said,"Would you like some chocolate truffles?" And I'm like,"Thank you very much." So she brought over a plate of four and there were five of us. So we said,"Oh no, there's five of us.""Can we have an extra one?" She said,"Oh no, they only come in plates of four.""So I can bring you another plate of four." Which she did. So we now had eight between five of us. But it was a really great example of where the process was just obviously stupid. The waitress could see that. We could see that. And yet she was not allowed to deviate from that process.

Jimmy:

fortunately James, it was worth the wait.

James:

It was, it was very good. Enjoyed that one.

Jimmy:

My, my low light was the fact that as that example just shows our second line, it support is you. One of the things that we did up until Christmas of this season is we were recording them all our episodes, more or less face-to-face. And that's much easier to have the conversation and all the rest of it. But then when we switched to doing video, which has gone down really well, and the shorts that we've done have got literally tens of thousands of views. The downside is we can't figure out how to make the technology work for us to record video when we're in the same place. So every week we're having to record remotely, and that's been a, an absolute pain in the ass in many ways. So, yeah, the technology's wonderful when it works, but like anything when it doesn't, it's a absolute pain. So that, I guess, was a, a low light.

James:

No, you're absolutely right. Not sitting opposite you face to face every week is just being hideous.

Jimmy:

Well James, you can be sarcastic, but it meant we didn't eat, eat anywhere near as much as Cake Sing as we used to have a cake every time we did a recording.

James:

So go on then. What's happening over the summer and what we're doing about season three?

Jimmy:

So season three will be back in September. And we are going to carry on recording episodes over the, summer. We've got some interesting guests lined up. If you've got any ideas for guests or any ideas for subjects that you'd like us to cover in season three,'cause in fairness, a few of our episodes in season two were. From suggestions from our, audience. So if you've got any suggestions for season three, just get in touch.

James:

So over the summer also what we're gonna do,'cause you might be thinking, oh, how am I gonna survive over the summer without the adults terms of me years? But we're gonna share some of the more popular content over the year. So, you'll see some flashbacks over the summer as well.

Jimmy:

So thank you to everyone for all your support with, season two. Well, hope you have a, a fantastic summer and uh, we look forward to seeing you in September when you can find out how James got on and his first weekend away with Mrs. Law for over 20 years.

James:

Yeah, lovely. Something to look forward to. A cliffhanger.

Jimmy:

Yes, that and the fact that you shouldn't work with Southerners. So we'll see if we are still talking, come uh, September.

James:

See you later.

Jimmy:

Thanks everyone.

James:

Cheers. Now. Ah, very good. Sounds quite exciting. Reminds me of that song, doesn't it? Do you remember that? Was it Colonel Abrams I've Got the Power?

Jimmy:

No Snap.

James:

Ooooh Was it Snap? Sorry. I do apologise

Jimmy:

Colonel Abrams was trapped. Oh.

James:

Oh Lord, I'm trapped

Jimmy:

like a fool I'm in a cage. I can't get out. trapped

James:

Yeah, mid eighties. Here we go. Right. We might cut that bit out. Right?

Jimmy:

we might, I think we should.

People on this episode

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James Lawther

Co-host
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Jimmy Barber

Co-host