Corporate Noise: How to Keep Calm When Everyone’s Shouting

Work is noisy. Not just the hum of open-plan offices or the ping of endless emails, but the soul-sapping, productivity-killing corporate noise—the meetings that should have been emails, the politics that should have been resolved, and the reports that should have been binned. In this episode of A Job Done Well, Jimmy and James dissect the chaos of modern workplaces, where conflicting agendas, ego-driven leaders, and short-termism turn even the simplest tasks into a slog through quicksand.

From the absurdity of "magnet ball" management (where everyone chases the same ball, achieving nothing) to the silent killer of organisational focus, they expose why noise thrives—and how you can fight back. Their advice? Be proactive, face into the problem, and for God’s sake, stop blind-copying people on emails. With their usual mix of dry wit and hard-won wisdom, they arm you with tactics to cut through the clutter, protect your sanity, and maybe—just maybe—get your actual job done.

Key Points:

• Noise is inevitable, but not unstoppable. It’s the corporate ivy choking your productivity—meetings, emails, politics, and misaligned objectives.
• Ask: Does this make the boat go faster? If not, it’s noise.
• Egos and silos fuel the chaos. Leaders broadcast; teams retreat. The result? A symphony of distraction.
• Data beats drama. Facts cut through opinion. If someone says “they always…”, ask: Who’s ‘they’? What’s ‘always’?
• Don’t be part of the problem. Stop blind CC’ing the world, own your mistakes, and—above all—do something about it.

Transcript

Speaker 0:03

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.

James 0:15

Hello? What are we talking about today then?

Jimmy 0:18

Hi, James. Well, today we are talking about how you can negotiate noise at work.'cause work is getting more and more noisy and people are getting bogged down by the corporate noise that exists. Noise could be emails, politics, meetings, corporate training, reports, papers, you name it. We're gonna share some of our top tips to help you avoid getting bogged down.

James 0:42

It's interesting. I do when I start now this shows me age here. When I started work, we had a lot of offices around the and we had the. Into office post You. We had those brown envelopes. You remember those

Jimmy 0:54

oh yeah. Yeah.

James 0:54

string? Yeah. You've gotta be, you've gotta be over 50. Do remember the bloody brown envelopes? Well, we have these brown envelopes and you used to put people's names on the, anyway with a piece of string to seal it and you used to go round like internal posts. But when you're relying on brown envelopes to ship you the noise around it slows things down a little bit and people get time to think. Whereas you can't send the email and then think, oh shit, I really should not have sent it. I think, the best way to cure the noise is we just need to all go back to brown envelopes.

Jimmy 1:25

Well, let's not focus too much on that as being the answer to today's podcast.

James 1:30

So jump the jump the,

Jimmy 1:32

Well, I think you might have done, I think you might.

James 1:35

So go on then. If we're not jumping the shark, tell me what is noise, what's your definition and what's your experience of it?

Jimmy 1:41

So for me, noise is all the stuff that happens that makes a. Working life feel like running through quicksand at times. Stuff that gets in the way of successful delivery. I'd call it corporate tl and we've all experienced it it can be lots of forms, but it basically, it just takes you away from your purpose, your results, your objectives. What you're here to do is all the stuff that gets in the way and. I think one of the big issues is it goes unchecked. So within organizations it grows like it's like Ivy climbing up at. House, it grows unchecked. Nobody's there to keep it in control. Nobody's monitoring the number of meetings that are happening, the amount of email traffic that's going on, the amount of corporate noise that goes on, it doesn't get measured, so it gets unchecked. So,

James 2:36

Yeah. I've probably said this before, but I used to have. Boss, bless her. Used to sit in meetings all the time laptop open doing her knee emails, and she was constantly looking at flipping emails and never paying any attention to the to the meeting. And that for me is what noise is. It's just the stuff that gets in the way.

Jimmy 2:52

I think you're right, but I in my experience, every organization I've worked with, it's always existed to varying degrees. So why do you think that noise exists?

James 3:07

Well, the first one for me actually is just as simple as conflicting objectives,

Jimmy 3:13

Yeah.

James 3:13

right? Because if you are trying to do something and somebody else is trying to do somebody else something else and they're just totally misaligned, then you do create conflicts. And that very conflict creates noise. It can't help. But, so that for me is the first step of it, but I think that's not the root of it. That's, it's almost like, you have five why's, why do you get noise because of conflict in your objectives. question then becomes why do you get conflict in your objectives?

Jimmy 3:38

And you often get conflicting objectives because organizations haven't been clear on their purpose, what they're here to do. Now in my experience, when you're not all crystal clear on why you're here, everyone starts building their own kind of agendas. Their own pet projects or their own initiatives or whatever it is. All of that stuff that doesn't help you get to where you're gonna get to. I think both on in terms of conflicting agendas, but also stuff that doesn't really move the organization forward. I think both of those are reasons why noise exists.

James 4:17

It's a clear source. And maybe, I mean, maybe this is a bit of a. Catchall, but an obvious one is just, oh, well, you can either have too much control and governance where people are hell bent on controlling their little bit of the organization,

Jimmy 4:31

Or you can have not enough. So an example that exists in nearly every organization is email the amount of email traffic there is. And is there any oversight or any control over emails? In most organizations I've worked with, F1 does what they want.

James 4:49

Yeah. That's interesting thought. And it is, you're right. It's just not, and there's the whole thing about switching costs. If you're sitting there looking at your email, then each new email you get, costs you time to switch from what you were thinking

Jimmy 5:00

It does

James 5:01

and it just, yeah. SAPs the life out of you.

Jimmy 5:03

And one, one organization I worked in, which I think was prideful. Progressive about this it was trying to encourage people. Just everyone does all their work by email, right? A lot of the time. And all I do is I send you an email, get the task off my back and onto your back, right? Rather than just come along, have a quick conversation and settle whatever it is that we're doing. Well, they had a 48 hour rule, which was basically don't expect a reply to an email in 48 hours. So that meant that it took away this imagined immediacy that you should be replying to my emails like that because you knew you weren't gonna get it for a couple of days. So if you wanted a quick answer that forced you to go and go and talk to people.

James 5:47

There's a cost saving in that, right? We could get rid of all these email servers and invest in some brown envelopes that will get you there automatically.

Jimmy 5:55

you keep coming back to your brown envelopes. James.

James 5:58

Right. Okay then. So there you go. Conflicting agendas and lack of focus. other big one I think for me is just the culture of the organization.'cause I don't think all organizations are, have the same amount of

Jimmy 6:10

No.

James 6:11

as others. Yeah. So one of the things are, I've just, I've worked in some organizations is just childish is the sort of who shouts loudest gets what they want. School of

Jimmy 6:20

Yeah.

James 6:21

Yeah. And where you allow that to happen. Then that just creates a lot of noise and reactivity. So that will be one of the things that I will pick out.

Jimmy 6:30

Yeah. I think also there's that, classic short-term focus. So, we're always focused on this month's review, this month's objective, this year's budgets, this quarters objectives, whatever it is, it drives short-termism. So. A lot of that drives a lot of noise within organizations. And I won't even mention all things around how organizations manage performance and all of the processes because you just won't stop for the rest of the article.

James 6:58

You're right. Your short term focus though, that reminds me of the you've heard about magnet ball.

Jimmy 7:03

No.

James 7:04

It's playing magnet ball. Well, when you watch and there you go, I'm gonna teach you something about football. You're gonna like this. When you watch a professional team play football, players all have their own, They know the word for it is they all have their own role. They have their they play a position, that's the word, but they all go and stand in different parts of the field. When you see a bunch of three year olds or four year olds playing football, it's like the football's a magnet and they all just chase after the ball. But in a lot of organizations, there's just a lot of lack of trust and everybody's chasing the ball, and it's like magnet ball, which in turn creates a lot of noise.

Jimmy 7:37

I can't believe you used a footballing analogy, James, to

James 7:41

and only term it is ever gonna happen.

Jimmy 7:43

Yeah, but then you couldn't remember whether it was roles or positions. So only half worked.

James 7:47

I could remember. Just didn't know, mate, to be honest with you.

Jimmy 7:51

Good effort though. I think other things that impact and create noise is people working in silos. So organizations are often designed in silos and they think in their silos and I think that siloed mentality can create a lot of noise because I'm thinking about my bit and optimizing my bit and I don't mind what's happening in your bit and what the impacts of my changes are on you. All that sort of stuff creates noise.

James 8:18

And which I suppose brings us back to that point about lack of focus, isn't it really? On top of that though, just some organizations are really bad at blame. if you wanna create a lot of noise, just start blaming people for poor performance and then you'll see people rushing around making excuses and God knows what else. But none of this really helps improve the situation at all. It's just creating organizational.

Jimmy 8:44

Yeah. And when you're talking about that kind of noise and people's behaviors. I think ego dries a lot of how organizations work and the noise that created in organizations and, I mean, so many times I was talking to somebody earlier today, funny enough, I was saying that senior leaders are like work generation machines. It's like, I'd like to see this. I wouldn't it be interesting if we should do this. Here's another idea. Go and think about this. And, was it was it Jeff Bezos who said that when he started his business one of his coaches said to him, Jeff, the single thing that could kill your business quickest is you, because you have just too many ideas and the organization isn't in a position to absorb your constant new ideas, so you need to get control over that.

James 9:32

Which should, sorry. To link back, that comes back to the whole point about lack of focus.

Jimmy 9:37

Yeah. Yeah. But I think the kind of top down leadership, I think often happens. And it's like that old saying, you've got one mouth and two ears, and they should be used in that proportion. But senior leaders use their mouth constantly and they don't listen. To understand what's really going on. So that broadcast constantly, I think that creates a lot of noise.

James 10:01

And I suppose organizations should sleepwalk into this, right? I mean, some managers, they just create noise to create distraction.

Jimmy 10:08

Yeah.

James 10:08

the classic example is our friend Donald, but it almost seems like, well, it's Monday. I needs to do something outrageous just to cover up from all the shit I did created last week.

Jimmy 10:17

Yeah, and all of those politicians, leaders, are not thinking necessarily, does what I'm doing, move the country, the society, people forward. It's just. Creating that kind of illusion of noise. So I think there are lots of points around why it exists, but really focus on then James, from our experience, what are the things that we've done?'cause we've worked in some very noisy organizations and very noisy situations. What are the things that we've done that helped us get cut through and still deliver great results even despite the corporate noise?

Speaker 2 10:54

Our podcast is all about helping people, teams, and organizations perform better and enjoy work more.

Speaker 3 11:03

I get as far as to say that we believe that everyone and every team has the potential to transform their performance by optimizing what they currently do.

Speaker 2 11:11

So if you'd like to discuss how we can help you transform your performance, then get in touch or maybe check out our website. We also do speaking events, mentoring advice, work as well.

James 11:25

Well, so I think the first thing, and it's a bit bloody obvious, right? But get proactive about it. So you don't want to be caught on the back forth and wallet with a load of noise. You're in a far better position. If you go out there and you find out what your customers want and you find out what they're unhappy about, because then you're not gonna get surprised by stuff. So that would be my first piece of advice. It's just really get proactive and find out what the situation is. So an example there would be well, I've done it twice, actually two organizations, but just sent out some customer surveys. To your internal customers and find out, well, what their problems are, what do they think? And it's never terribly surprising. They'll come back and they'll tell you that you're too slow and your quality's poor, and by the way, your cost too much. So that will be the feedback. It doesn't matter where you sit, but at least if you've actually gone out and asked them. Then at least shows that you're listening to them. So that would be my first piece of advice. I did incidentally work for somebody who I suggested they did this and they said no, we can't do that. It's far too dangerous. Mention how that went. Anyway.

Jimmy 12:30

But I think you're right, James. I think the ostrich approach, it seems like the easiest way of dealing with things in the moment, but it has no longevity about it at all. The other thing that links in with this is be, be honest about stuff so, show your vulnerability, show your problems don't try and hide stuff all the time. People don't like coverups, they don't like spin. They don't like people who have, massive egos and are showing off all the time. If you do those things, invariably to some people, you're making yourself a target. And the, at the end of the day, noise is often pushed in the direction of a target to slow people down.

James 13:10

Well, and you can see that, sorry, coming back to politics, you can see that in American politics at the moment, there is vanishingly, little humility there and what they

Jimmy 13:18

Yeah.

James 13:18

it. A whole load of noise. Yeah.

Jimmy 13:20

Yeah.

James 13:20

So be proactive, find out what your customers want, and be humble. Go on. What would you say next?

Jimmy 13:26

I think the point you made about focus is a, is really important one, and all the organizations that I gained to spend time. Being clear, have they understood their purpose and have they communicated that in an engaging way? Because that gives you a really good basis for challenging behaviors or activity when it doesn't line up with that. And I know we touched on it before, but it's back to that story about the British Rowing team and Ben Hunt Davis and the team, and they were aiming to. Get a gold medal. And the mantra that they had was, will it make the boat go faster? And they questioned everything with that question. And I think that's what focus does for you. You can always look at things and say, well, does this email, does this project, does this behavior, does it make the boat go faster? But we don't do that often enough.

James 14:16

That's an interesting point though, because you can get sideswiped by somebody bitching or some email or whatever the hell it will be, but actually asking yourself, does that make the boat go faster? Because if it does, then actually it's not noise, is it?

Jimmy 14:29

No, and I think that's part of one of the things that you can also do,, if there is a problem there, understand the problem, face into the problem. Don't just, assume that it is noisy. It's one of the arts is being able to see the wood for the tree. So being able to say, right, actually, no, this person isn't just noisy. They have a point. There is something that I can do to improve the situation. So face into it.

James 14:53

Yeah, which actually lines up with your point about humility a little bit as well.

Jimmy 14:57

Yeah.

James 14:58

Because if you, yeah, I have got a problem. I need to fix it and these are the things I am going to do. The other thing there is actually you might be getting a load of grief from someone and you might think it's totally unreasonable, in which case, if you are clear about it, go and have a chat with your boss.'cause your boss should buy you some air cover as well. So there's, more than one way to clear the noise. But making sure that your body's with you is also a very sensible tactic, I

Jimmy 15:26

Yeah. And one of the other things which I know is in, often a rarity in today's world at times is okay get some data and history. Get the evidence for things and don't just. Things are, don't become facts despite what Donald thinks. Things don't become facts just'cause you say them out loud. Actually you can cut through the noise if you are more evidence and fact-based. So, back up some of your assertions, some of your beliefs, some of your activities with some data and facts.

James 15:59

Yeah. And linked to that, something Amanda once pointed out to me is, you'll get people saying, oh, they always do that. Well, who's they? And what is always, because actually when you've got that sort of generalization going on, that's not helpful. But if you can get really factually about who did what, specifically on what occasion, then that will dampen down the noise as well, which is your point about data and history. So really get the facts. So I would

Jimmy 16:26

Yeah.

James 16:26

with that.

Jimmy 16:28

Yeah. A lot of noise has its basis in subjective opinions and, like you were saying, bitching and moaning about stuff. The easiest way of dealing with that at times is stick to the facts and evidence-based for your opinion, rather than just slacking and moan slacking stuff off and moaning.

James 16:45

Yeah. Another one, it's a bit obvious, but you know, walking the other person's shoes. So if

Jimmy 16:50

Yeah.

James 16:50

is creating you an awful lot of grief, well, why are they creating you an awful lot of grief? What is it that you are doing that is upsetting them? And why is that upsetting them? Because you don't have to fight fire with fire. You can just, if you can understand somebody else's position. Then you can invariably do something that will reduce the noise

Jimmy 17:10

You can take action, can't you? Whereas if you don't understand it, you tend to be reactive and you're just reacting to whatever they're saying and doing. And either situation recently with one of my daughters, and she was having problems with her boss at work. And actually I said to her, are you thinking about what's going on for your boss that might be driving behaviors? We immediately personalize it. It's me. It's what I'm doing. This is what I've done. Whereas actually, if you understand that people have a lot of stuff going on in their work lives and their personal lives that cause them to react certain ways. So really thinking about is that noise, the superficial thing that you're seeing in front of you, or is there something that's driving that and understand that helps you take action?

James 17:53

Yeah. And get to the root cause of it. Denial's never a good strategy either. My daughter, bless her, she, I say she got some feedback, they all got hold in. So about 30 graduate trainees all got hold into a meeting and they were were told it was a personal branding meeting and they were told that the executives didn't think they looked professional enough or something like that. I can't remember. I wasn't there. But, instantly, of course you get into this thing of denial. Well, they obviously aren't talking about me, they're talking about the other 29. Or it's it's those guys over there and not us, or whatever the hell it might be. But actually trying to understand rather than denying the problem, trying to understand what the problem is and who specifically thinks what is really very helpful and you can do something about it. Which I suppose takes me to the final point, right? Is if

Jimmy 18:42

Yeah,

James 18:42

lot of noise, you can continue ignoring it as long as you like. But that is not a good strategy. I suppose. It's your emu point, but you need to do something about it.

Jimmy 18:54

O.

James 18:54

Yeah, I doing you stick there right in the ground or not?

Jimmy 18:57

No, I think that they're very similar to birds, ostrich, emu. I mean, they would consider them very different, but to us, uninformed people, they're very similar. But I don't think that people talk about being an emu.

James 19:09

Now are they in, I somewhere in Australia, aren't somewhere in Africa.

Jimmy 19:15

I dunno. We're getting into spaces that we clearly know nothing about. James. I think that's the key thing

James 19:20

But I suppose my final thing is, do you know if there's a lot of noise you have to do something about it? Yeah. You will not go away by itself.

Jimmy 19:28

I think if back to the do something, whether it's, if you're looking at the noise, if you think about, my example about emails, the amount of email traffic in your team or your organization isn't gonna change unless you do something about it. So tackling it head on and finding ways of dealing with it, it won't go away. It's not just gonna suddenly disappear.

James 19:47

And another one actually, but I think the thing is, don't contribute to the noise.

Jimmy 19:52

Very good point.

James 19:53

Right? So it's very easy, yeah. to copy 27 people into something and respond instantaneously and inflame a situation, but it's invariably not very helpful.

Jimmy 20:08

And I think some of the smallest things. A good example. Have you ever BCC'd someone into an email?

James 20:16

No have

Jimmy 20:17

And I think you never should. And I think that's a little tiny thing. Think about that. If you've ever blind copied someone,

James 20:26

It's not

Jimmy 20:27

not, it's not helpful. But the, your point is a great one, which is, think about,

James 20:32

you do, you can't trust the bugger not to copy everybody else in when they respond.

Jimmy 20:37

I reckon you've done that.

James 20:39

you

Jimmy 20:39

That's, that has happened to you. You try. You've done one of them, you've definitely been involved. But the point is a good one. Think about how you are contributing towards the noise. So in summary, I think from our experience, noise is almost always inevitable in organizations to varying degrees and it takes many forms, but in general, it's what stops you from doing a great job. The corporate TL.

James 21:08

And there are a few things you can do to stop the noise or at least mitigate the impact of it. The first one for me is just be proactive. Get out there, understand what's going on.

Jimmy 21:18

The second one was just that you have a bit of humility about things. Don't be honest. Don't be a show off.

James 21:24

Yeah. three. Maybe the organization lacks focus, but doesn't mean you shouldn't. So just be really clear about what's important to you, what the two or three things and focus on.

Jimmy 21:36

The next one was face into the noise. Do not be an ostrich or an emu if you're in James' world.

James 21:45

I like this one. A bit of data and some history. So what are the facts? What really is going on? As opposed to what's the emotion?

Jimmy 21:54

Don't contribute towards the noise. Think about what you are doing,

James 21:57

No blind copying people in. And put yourself in the other person's shoes. Understand what's driving them.

Jimmy 22:04

and finally just do something because it won't go away and it'll carry on impacting your ability to do a great job. So do something. Hopefully you found this episode useful and we'll see you next week.

James 22:17

Cheers. Now

Speaker 4 22:18

We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast

Speaker 5 22:21

from purpose to corporate jargon,

Speaker 4 22:23

but always focused on one thing, getting the job done well,

Speaker 5 22:27

easier said than done. So if you've got. Unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck.

Speaker 4 22:36

If your backlogs are outta control and your costs are spiraling and that big IT transformation project that you've been promised, just keeps failing to deliver,

Speaker 5 22:45

we can help. If you need to improve your performance, your team's performance, or your organizations, get in touch at Jimmy at@jobdonewell.com orJames@jobdonewell.com.