Why The Best Teams Always Have Fun

What makes a great team?
Why do some workplaces energise us while others drain us?
And in a world increasingly shaped by AI, what does it actually mean to be more human at work?

In this episode of Who’s Elvis Round Here?, Chris Baréz-Brown sits down with former Twitter VP and workplace culture expert Bruce Daisley to explore the future of work, leadership, creativity and human connection.

Bruce shares the story of how a hand-drawn cartoon CV landed him his first job, why “fun” is often misunderstood in business, and the simple leadership behaviours that make people feel seen, valued and motivated.

Together they dive into:

Why the best teams are usually the ones having the most fun
The psychology of “mattering” at work
Why having a best friend at work changes everything
The hidden cost of AI-driven efficiency
How leaders can create more human workplaces
Why creativity and connection are becoming MORE valuable in the AI era

This conversation is packed with practical insights, brilliant stories and refreshing optimism about the future of work.

If you care about leadership, culture, creativity, teamwork or building better organisations — this one’s for you.

🎙️ Guest: Bruce Daisley
Former VP Twitter EMEA | Author | Workplace Culture Expert

📚 Bruce’s work:

Newsletter: https://www.makeworkbetter.info/
Books: https://www.brucedaisley.com/

🔔 Subscribe for more conversations with extraordinary leaders exploring how to create more human, energising and meaningful work.

#Leadership #WorkCulture #AI #FutureOfWork #Teamwork #BruceDaisley #Podcast #ChrisBarezBrown #WorkplaceCulture #Creativity

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

And I've become fixated with the idea of something called mattering. And mattering is really simple. It's the feeling that you are significant and important to others.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to the Who's Elvis Round Here podcast. This is where I get to talk to some of the most fantastic leaders on the planet who share insight into what makes them tick and how we can get even more from our people so they love their life and they love their work. And uh I'm I'm in for a real treat today because I've got Bruce Daisy on. Bruce, welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. It's been a while since we played, and there's there's a lot of work you've been doing, it's been fantastic. But those people who don't know you, can you give us a bit of background as to who you are?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

For a long time I worked in media and technology. So I I worked at Google. I was in the right place at the right time, just after they bought YouTube. So I ended up working at YouTube for about four years. Um the the good luck of being in the right place, truly. Uh, then from there, I ended up going to work at Twitter, eventually running Twitter across Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Uh fantastic fun. Before the current owner, I want to emphasize. So if you're thinking it's not called that anymore. It was when I was, let me tell you that. Uh yeah, so spent a long time in that. Became obsessed in that era, actually, in that thing that I think we all are conscious of, but might maybe sort of don't necessarily lead into, which is like the dynamics of teams and work culture. And that old thing, you know, if you ever find yourself either bumping into an old mate and sharing a drink and saying, Do you remember the fun we had and nostalgizing those moments of wonderful team work? And that's my obsession. Like, what is it that makes a good team? What is it that makes a good culture? And I think what I learned was that technology companies don't have the answers to that. They aren't, while they might tell you that they've got magical cultures, tech firms really don't have anything special under their bonnet. And so while working at those tech firms, I was fascinating and obsessed with well, what are the rules? What should you do to make the culture better? And and just became obsessed with that really. So that's how I spend my time now. I do a newsletter and a podcast about workplace culture.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, brilliant. And look, you've you've written a couple of books, and you know, one of my favorites, Enjoy Work. Product Well thumbed, Bruce. Well fun. I mean, what I really like about your approaches is it kind of seems to be fueled by just a curiosity for how people show up and how we can actually have more fun, bring more of ourselves to work, and actually create a better impact whilst doing it. Very much so.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

It's sort of trying to post-rationalise some of the stuff that we've seen work and trying to understand why it worked. You know, we've all we've all hope got experience of being in a good team, and it might only be a good team at school or at college. Maybe your work experience hasn't lived up to that. Um, but we've all had moments where we've thought, oh, this is really fun, this is really special around here. Listen, I was told by someone in the middle of my career that he said, um, you'd better not be seen laughing. If the big bosses see you laughing, then you're gonna be in trouble. And I was like, oh, really? Is that it? Is is fun? The is does it exist in opposition to productivity? And so it became like this sort of interesting pursuit because all of the places that I worked at that were most effective and successful, we had really good fun at them. So I was like, that's a strange take that someone thinks that you can't have fun around here, or you can't be seen to have fun around here. And I guess everything I've done, I don't ever think that I've got the definitive answers on how to build great cultures, but I'm just constantly like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I witnessed that. That's definitely a good thing. I wonder if we could talk to that person. Or um I did I had a fascinating one recently. I'm I've just been really interested in things I've read recently about talking to strangers. You're either a stranger talking or you're not a stranger. I think we all talk to strangers in some capacity, but there's just lovely research about talking to strangers. The interesting thing about talking to strangers, even the introverts amongst us, is that a day where we've found ourselves talking to strangers, we report, not knowing that they're connected, we report that's a happy day for us. They strangers talking to strangers gives us energy, typically gives us uh entertainment, amusement. The interesting thing about it though, is that if you ask someone after they've spoken to a stranger, do you think the stranger enjoyed it? There's what's called the liking gap. We don't believe the stranger enjoyed it as much as we we did. There's a liking gap. We think that we've sort of taken something from that stranger. And the interesting thing about that is it also applies to work colleagues. So when we chat to a work colleague, we think we like them more than they like us. Now, that raises really interesting questions when maybe we don't see each other five days a week now, so we're surrounded with people who we think aren't as into us as they are. Well, it you know, like you add then added complications. It's no wonder then that teams don't feel as buzzy, as energized now. Sure. We just we just don't realize how much these people like us. And so, you know, I'm just really intrigued with things like that. Thinking, oh yeah, maybe that explains why teams don't feel as fun now as they used to. What can we do to overcome that?

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Love it, love it. Well, um, my first big question then, um, Bruce, is uh what is the story that you love to tell that people love to hear?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah, I I saw the this question and I sort of I thought for a long time about it because there's a lot of different ones along the way. The one that I typically always tell, uh, I enjoy telling, is how I got my first job. Grew up on a cancer state in Birmingham, my my dad was too ill to work, so I had no network to tap into. And um, and I got my first job through drawing a cartoon CV, like a Bino cartoon strip of my life, and sending it. Initially, I sent it to 50 record companies, uh, ended up getting a bit of work experience at record companies, actually got offered a job by Virgin Record, but it was conditional on me having a driving license. I I arranged an uh intensive driving course, I took that driving test. Sadly, I failed that driving test, but I thought I've got something here. So I sent it every job I saw. I would change the first square and I'd send it to that job. And uh and I got a job at I got a job at Capitol Radio doing that. No, look, the the reason why I like that story, and and I know there's a danger when you tell young people now about how I got a job, it shows a lack of empathy to what looking for jobs looks like now. Um but I'm still convinced when I was the VP of Twitter, I would get uh zero letters a week, zero things in the mail every week. Sure. And so I always used to say to people, you want to get my attention, there is a guaranteed path to my door that I will personally read. If you write personal in the corner, put it in a coloured envelope, people will think it's a birthday card. You've got a personal way to put something in the hand of I would say 99.9% of the people in the country. You know, it's possible the Prime Minister wouldn't open that himself, but the chief executive of every business will, and certainly the creative director of every business will. And so you've got the chance of putting something in someone's hand, and if you can get a bit of their attention and you can make yourself feel like you're someone they should root for, and that's what happened to me. I sent the the CV initially to those 50 record companies. I used to have, I'd have people coming back from lung lunches in record companies going phoning me up drunk, phoning, oh mate, I love this CV, mate. I love this CV. One guy, one guy uh from a sort of big record label phoned me up. He said, Listen, if you want to put me down as a reference and I'll say you worked here, how about people to commit fraud for me?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

You know, like because of the genius of the cartoon strip. I love that. And you know, I think you know, creativity and how you break through today and connect with people in more meaningful ways is a big part of it. And um so often today we're so separated by the world of digital and the pace of life that we miss those connection points. Um I've still got I did some work for the government once, and I've still got a handwritten letter from the Permanent Secretary in green ink, I remember it vividly, uh, thanking me for the work that I do because there was real meaning and there was a real intent behind it that cut through.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Look, and absolutely I couldn't agree more. And look, it's not gonna be you send some AI-generated cartoon and it lands on someone's desk and it has the same impact. To some extent, it's the crapness, it was a four out of ten cartoon. It was the fact it wasn't beautifully completed, but you could see actually you could see bit all bits of real ink on the page. You could you felt like, wow, did he do this for us? And uh, and so that was it. I I just think it's a reminder. Look, so extrapolating that forwards now. My view is always if you're speaking at a conference, you imagine, oh, I've got to go and I've got an audience who are excited to hear what I want to hear. They're not, they're bored, they've been there all day. You know, they they're they're filled with remorse that they went there this morning with a blank notepad and loads of optimism. They've spent their day ticking around on their phone, not really paying attention. Turn up and entertain them, get their attention, and they'll be grateful for it. And so, like, all of those things I think are adjacent to each other. A recognition that people are actually in the market to be entertained. And if you gift them that, if you give them some sense of that empathetic connection, people will thank you for it.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

They will, they will, and um we need more of it now than ever, that is for sure. 100%. 100%. And that leads me on to my next question. Um, what is the single most important thing do you think in helping us release the genius of our people?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, for when it comes to our people, um, I've been thinking a lot about this, you know. Like I wrote that book about work. I'm I'm sort of thinking all the time about what are the secrets of great teamwork. Um, there's an interesting thing that a guy said to me, uh professor at Henley Business Centre, and he said, the more you talk about culture, the less people believe you. We we live in an era of cynicism now. You know, that's that the last five prime ministers have been the least popular prime minister in history. Imagine that. You follow this trust and you're still worse than least trust. Imagine that, lads. Why? Because we just live in an era where it's an impossible job and everyone thinks they're being manipulated, they just haven't worked out how they're being manipulated yet. So this is sort of interesting here, and so as a result, that has an impact on workplaces, it has an impact on teams. So, people, you need to show, not tell. Look, the most important thing, I think, I spoke to an author of a book last year, and I've become fixated with the idea of something called mattering. And mattering is really simple. It's the feeling that you are significant and important to others. The origin of it goes back to like goes back 40 years to the 1980s. Psychologists identified that kids who felt like they mattered to their parents did better in school. You know, really simple thing. If they if kids felt like their their parents were interested in them, it seemed to be the thing that sort of gave them that um that that sense that they were gonna they were gonna strive. But it really plays a part in work because you know, we're in an environment now where paradoxically we're all in meetings, we're all superficially giving our attention to each other, but no one's really paying attention in them. And then we get off the meeting and we've got 20 messages on our phone, and so we're just going to read that. And so everyone's sort of flitting between these demands for our attention, and and yet when you receive a handwritten note with green ink and someone describing something specific about what you did, it's so touching to you. You frame it or you put it on your wall or your hand onto it. You know, when you feel, when any of us, you know, someone as accomplished as yourself, but when you receive something that feels makes you feel seen, it plays a big part. And there's a there's a really interesting detail that I say this all the time, but it's just because most people weren't necessarily aware of it. But the number one predictor if if you're engaged with your job, is not whether you buy into the strategy or it's not whether you were promoted last year, it's whether you've got a best friend at work. And uh and I think it goes to when we feel like we've got someone to go and gossip with or moan to or have a laugh, we feel and it's reciprocated, we feel seen, we feel understood, we feel like I'll go and chat to Chris because I'm gonna moan to him and he knows exactly what I think of the big box, or he knows exactly what I think of that problem we've got, and you feel seen and understood. So, you know, that um so the most important thing with teams is at an individual level, actually. You can't really access the idea of feeling part of something until you feel respected as part of it. Um, you know, the way I see it is there's no we without me. We we need to feel like we met around here, and then when we met around here, we're we're really willing to join the choir, we're really willing to sort of have our voice heard, but we also need to feel like you know, someone's put our up their arm around us uh at some point to say well done, or can I help, you know. So that's it for me. Like that idea of mattering is is sort of my fixation, really.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Well, look, it's a beautiful concept. I I I love it as well, Bruce. Mattering, there's something uh profoundly simple about it, but but actually I think we can all connect with it because we know what it feels like. We also know what it feels like when it's absent, which is quite a shocker. Um so practically, you know, for leaders listening into this, what can they do um on a kind of daily basis to make sure that their people feel like they do matter?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

It's a really interesting example from teaching, actually. You know, the the it the the the way that we can often see that we've we're doing our jobs is we can feel like I was chatting to someone who's having exactly this issue last weekend. Uh we can we can feel like we've got problem people in our team or problems that we've got to deal with. Yeah, it can be our in our life. We've got a problem person in our life or problem, you know, someone that we sort of encounter. And if you treat them like an obstacle, you know what? They they tend to be an obstacle. Um, and there's an approach that teachers have got. It's it's I've I've read about it a lot on sort of teaching blogs, and and it's called the two by ten approach. And this idea that teachers they'll take two minutes, so it's quite doable. Uh, they take two minutes every day for ten days, and they go and chat to their problem child at any point apart from about schoolwork. So you can you imagine, you know, one of the examples I saw was a woman who's got a really young, you know, uh junior school kid, goes over every day and chats to this kid. Well, within a couple of two minutes, a couple of these episodes, she discovered the kid's dad's just gone to prison. Okay, right. So, so so she's got this problem child who's kicking up. Actually, she discovers pretty quickly, oh, right, there's a human part to this within moments. The girl's, you know, saying, telling her how much she loves doing what writing and writing her name and handwriting, she wants to get her handwriting better. And what the teacher described, she said, This has been miraculous, actually, because I'd started seeing this person by this description that problem kid, the problem kid. And actually, once you see the kid for who they are, you realise, oh, it's it's not a problem kid, it's a kid who's got problems, but actually, I can transform, and so many of us do that, and so that two by ten exercise, and the great thing about it is it's so low cost, it's free, it's gonna take 20 minutes of your time. But just thinking that problem who I don't seem to connect with, if I just take a little bit of time, and maybe you're not gonna do it 10 consecutive days because of how we work now, but maybe like every time I swing past their desk on the days we're in, I'll just take a couple of minutes and ask about something that they mentioned to me last time, or ask about something specific, and just start seeing if it transforms your relationship. And I think that's it. It's about when people feel uh respected, understood, they stop being the problem people in our lives, and they start. And so this guy who was telling me last weekend, he was like, Yeah, I've got a real issue actually. Someone's just raised a complaint at work. And I said, Okay, tell me about the person, and they described to me and said, It feels to me that that person doesn't feel seen, and what they're describing to you that complaint that's a symptom rather than a cause. And actually, like he said, he went and had a long conversation. He said, Yeah, yeah, there was way more to it than I understood, right? Okay, that's interesting. That's interesting that you're sort of thinking about that human level, and we also from the our own subjective experience of when we feel like we're experiencing someone who blanking us, not responding to our messages, not not interesting, and we start interpreting it. Um, but just interesting sort of to flip it and interpret it from the other side, I think. Two by ten exercise.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

It's it's and it's simple, it's fast. I love the fact that it also flips the fact that in business at the moment, what I'm seeing increasingly is people becoming so transactional. It's all about the work. I've got stuff to deliver, I've got this massive inbox, I've got all these messages to get on top of. People are they slow me down, you know. So I'm I'm gonna try and deal with them as efficiently as possible. I was I was talking to a friend of mine about this the other day who is mentioning the fact that there's a leader that they know who is all of his email replies are AI driven, right? And the whole team know it because it doesn't sound like him, but he's all about speed, he's not about people. And the danger is that we're gonna become so much more about efficiency that we lose that touch. And actually, just by doing you know, two minutes a day of checking in when it's not about the work, I think is about just getting that balance back again, where we're listening to the person work, listening to their life. And I love this whole concept of we make sure that people are seen. Because without it, we lose a massive energetic resource.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

But I think you could run a little wonderful experiment where you take people out to a place where the service is wonderful, attentive, humorous. You know, when you get some you ask someone's advice of what to have, and like and they respond to you, they describe it. I think you could take someone there and then say, look, and this is how much difference it makes. You know, we could have gone and ordered off the screen in in uh you know, in any shortage of places, but when someone's connected with you, it creates something special. And here's the interesting thing, like you know, if you go to AI and you ask AI to write you a marketing plan or you know, a you're gonna get a decent response. I suspect the response will be better next year and the be better again the year after. But all of your competitors can do that too, and every business that you're against. And so, unless you're adding value to what the AI is doing, you're basically saying, Yeah, yeah, I'm here to be replaced, or and and so for me, like in the era of AI, Microsoft used this phrase last year. They did a report and they said, Um, we're going to enter an era where intelligence is on tap and it will rewire business. Fantastic. That's really interesting because it begs the question: if you haven't got a human layer of the way we do things around here, the difference around here, the reason why our approach is different, then absolutely intelligence on tap will rewire business, you just won't feature in it. And so how you can do something astonishing, remarkable, different, unpredictable, human. Like Sam Altman was asked um uh what advice he would give to young kids, and he said sort of learn soft skills. But um, but I think there's some there's some truth in you know, being memorable, being distinctive, being human. These things have got a like a increasing value to them.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

They really do. There is, and um, you know, I'm I love tech, like yourself, because I I can see that the you know the advances are incredible. I mean, being alive right now, it's like living in Disney. Everything is changing so fast. The opportunity is incredible. But but what I am seeing is now the uh the the the kind of swing of where is humanity being represented? How are we making sure that people are still living really good lives where they can be themselves, they can contribute in a way that's unique. To who they are rather than just creating more and more content. I was talking to a big um advertising network recently, and they said, you know, we've got so much generation and so many brilliant insights, amazing research and ideas, that people are so overwhelmed they can't make decisions anymore. Which is a basic human thing to be able to do, to be able to go, which one shall I go for? And people are so overloaded that actually the way that their brains are working is such that they just can't decide so straightforwardly. They prefer to put it through another mix and go, give me another option, then they do actually narrow things down and say, This is what we're going to do. Which is which is very much an issue at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah, that's right. And and there's a truth that once you've reached the stage where you can't make a decision, it's larger because there's not much to be said between the two options. I'm a huge advocate for flipping coins because I tell you what, if you flip a coin and it suggests the one that you subconsciously didn't want to do, you'll very willingly overrule the coin. And so uh yeah, yeah, you'll be like, oh, actually, I know it said heads, but we're gonna go that way. Okay, you've made a decision, let's get on with it.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

But that's that's a lovely insight into the human engineering and understanding how we can make that work better for us in today's world. And actually, I think there's gonna be a lot more of that. There's gonna be a lot more of people tuning into themselves, understanding their intuition more, understanding what it is that they can do in a unique way that adds a value that other things can't. So I it's I think it's a real exciting time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Yeah, and look, you know, I guess sort of your last question is sort of what gives you hope. And the truth is is that um these things are always unevenly distributed, right? Yeah, like there'll there will be some brands that we love, some people we love dealing with, companies we love dealing with, that recognise this, they value this, and they sort of they differentiate themselves from it. And there's going to be plenty of other companies that think, well, this is cheaper, faster, quicker. It won't have the same sort of human elements to it, I think. So um you know, it's like uh uh I I just think the danger for anyone right now is to not recognize what humans add to to what we're doing, to not sort of do those things. I'm I I'm an eternal optimist when you say when the question is sort of what gives you hope, I'm always confident that things will probably work out better than we uh expect. It's not always right, but I think you know truth does history doesn't always prove that approach to be the accurate one. But these I I I love the um I don't know if you know the uh the uh the the rules of technology created by Douglas Adams and and uh Douglas Adams was the writer of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So I suspect, you know, a lot of the younger people might not know who Douglas Adams is, but um Douglas Adams' rules for technology were that anything that's invented before the time that you're 15 is normal and has always existed. Anything that's invented between your age of 15 and 30 is new and exciting, and and you'll sort of engage with it. Anything that's invented after the age of 30 is evil and is gonna bring about the downfall of civilization as we know it. And it's true to some extent. So sometimes the people you see who are really anti-AI, uh, and look, you know, there's definitely upsides and downsides to AI, but the people who are really anti, my only thing in my head is like, I wonder if that's because it just came when you're in the era where you didn't want new scary things to come along. Because there's inevitability to technological change, the the world's gonna be more technologically advanced, and it's it's always sort of well, how are you gonna adapt to it? When computers started doing special effects in movies, people probably thought, oh yeah, I'm not sure that's as good. But it does make for a more dazzling realm of storytelling now than ever before. Uh so yeah, I'm sort of my my view is um there's plenty of reasons to be optimistic if you look for them.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah, there are, and and you know, success comes from being adaptable and being able to experiment and learn as you go and not being fixed because the world is changing just so fast right now. And I think if you are one of those people with a very fixed identity of how you add value and what's worked in the past will work in the future, then it's it's tough. But for those people who are embracing this as you know, it is a world of Disney where things are extraordinary and changing on a weekly basis, then you know, what a time. What a time. Very much.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Very much, very much.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

So, Bruce, um, what's coming up for you that's exciting?

SPEAKER_01 26:43

I mean, all I spend my time really. Um, I do a newsletter make work better about work. Um I'm fascinated with it. I uh I love meeting organizations that are doing things well. I I chatted last year to to Greg Jackson who runs Octopus Energy. And what I love about the way that Octopus do things is they just try and give every single person who works in their call center the freedom to solve everyone's problems. Right, it's like a really different approach. The guy hates meetings, doesn't want to do meetings, right? Speaks to my own instincts. So I like I do a weekly newsletter trying to keep track of like what are other companies doing that are interesting? What are there are other companies doing that are exciting? Where are other companies getting it wrong? And I'm just sort of I've got like a personal obsession with trying to understand how we can make work better, really. So that's it, that's all I do. That's that's how I spend my time either uh writing about those things or do a podcast on those things or speaking about those things. I'm just you know eternally fascinated with the thing that made our teams fun.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Well, we we share that passion, Bruce. And um, you know, I love I love to see the work that you're doing because it really resonates with me. I also I I love it when people are stepping out of the lane and doing things in different ways that are really creating an impact, not only on the business success, but on people's lives. So um I I will be sharing some more notes with you. Uh, I just the idea of what Oxpici is doing is has got my head sparking. So I'm sure there's a few places we might be able to uh share some insights. But but Bruce, it's been wonderful having you on. Um thank you so much. I'm going to uh make sure that we've got all the links for your newsletter and everything so that anyone listening can get more of your work. Um but it's a breath of fresh air and it's a delight to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much for chatting, Chris. Really appreciate it.