Have traditional hierarchies made us too dependent?

6 May

  
    <a href="https://rss.com/podcasts/work-is-weird-now/2793458/">E:56 Have traditional hierarchies made us too depe | RSS.com</a>
  

Lizzie Penny and Alex Hirst are the co-founders of Hoxby, a global purpose-led consultancy and community of independent professionals, and co-authors of The Workstyle Revolution. They also invented the word workstyle — the idea that if everyone has the right to choose their lifestyle, they should be able to choose their workstyle too. Over more than a decade, they've built a working model at Hoxby that proves a different way is possible, and developed a proprietary framework that helps organisations design work for the digital age.

The 200-year hangover

The nine-to-five wasn't designed for knowledge workers. It was designed for factories. Alex traces the parent-child power dynamic that's been baked into employment since the industrial age — employer tells, employee does — and explains why that conditioning is so hard to shift even when the work itself looks nothing like it did 200 years ago. The problem isn't that organisations are bad. It's that the system was built for a world that no longer exists.

Freedom within a framework

When Hoxby launched, the founders thought freedom meant no rules. That lasted about two weeks. What they learned — the hard way — is that autonomy without structure isn't liberation, it's chaos. The answer they've spent a decade refining is freedom within a framework: a deliberately designed operating system that gives people genuine choice about how and when they work, while being clear about what they're accountable for and who they're depending on.

Why this is personal

Lizzie shares the story behind her conviction. A complicated pregnancy, surgery at 23 weeks, twins who survived against the odds. A breast cancer diagnosis in 2020. Her husband's subsequent cancer diagnosis. Three children. Through all of it, workstyle working meant she could keep going — not just surviving, but choosing when and how to show up. "There are so many reasons why I shouldn't still be in work. But being able to work in a workstyle way has meant that I can be." Alex talks about his own burnout, and the moment he realised he'd been measuring his professional value entirely by how many hours he put in.

The teenage angst phase

Most organisations right now are stuck somewhere uncomfortable: the old hierarchy hasn't gone away, but some autonomy is being offered — without the responsibility and skills that make autonomy actually work. Alex calls it the teenage angst phase. The result is confusion, frustration, and a workforce that's been given more freedom but not more control. The way out is developing a new set of skills — and learning to hold your responsibility to yourself in tension with your dependability to others.

The unlearning problem

Even Lizzie — who invented the word workstyle — still feels guilty doing laundry on a Wednesday. Changing how you work isn't just about changing your schedule. It's about unpicking decades of conditioning that says your value is measured by your presence. Dan admits to accepting a meeting he couldn't do and trying to dial in from another meeting rather than just saying no. These aren't individual failings. They're the residue of a system that's been teaching us the wrong things for a very long time.