The wonder of you. Monica Parker on joy, serendipity, toxic work cultures and awe

Monica Parker joins Mark Eltringham to share an Old Fashioned while discussing how to find wonder in the everyday, the limits of workplace design, our renewed obsession with productivity, how to achieve flow states in a world of distractions and what it means to be truly happy. There’s not much workplace news around right now as people are still finding their feet after Christmas, so we also explore some lessons we might take from the Post Office scandal about how organisations go wrong and the role of human nature in creating toxic cultures.

Monica is the founder of HATCH Analytics & The Wonder Lab – where wonder meets work. Author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Power Of Wonder. Exploring how altered states of wonder make us better leaders. in her own words, she is committed to making work suck less.

The Workplace Cocktail Hour is brought to you in partnership with The Workplace Event. Each episode looks at the major workplace related news stories from the last week or so. There’ll be no editing, the episode is recorded in real time at the end of the day, so we’ll be talking straight and reacting to current news and events. Each week’s guest is invited to nominate a topic for discussion and a drink for us to share. Doesn’t have to be alcoholic but the intention is to talk like normal, informed humans over a shared drink. At some point, we’ll be doing it in person.

If you’d like to take part in what we hope is an informed, intelligent and maybe challenging series, we’d love to hear from you.