Video makes the CEO a star

Hello and welcome to Working It.

At the moment, it’s hard to know what to say won’t be out of date in a week. Where/when are attacks on DEI going to end? And as for generative AI — what can we say for sure, except that we have to hold on to human values? If anyone has the definitive scoop on either of these topics — or even a crystal ball 🔮/ a side hustle in tarot (Bloomberg just did a fun article on the popularity of these cards with Gen Z) — do let me know.

Read on for expert tips for video-curious business leaders who want to start recording short clips 🎥. And in Office Therapy, we hear from a UK public servant spooked by the prospect of job cuts.

PS: My colleague Bethan Staton will be writing Working It for the next two weeks. I’ll be chairing business and workplace panels at Anthropy in Cornwall next week — do say hello if you’re there.

The rise of the CEO as social media star ⭐

You don’t need to be a 22-year-old TikTok creator to go viral. As more social platforms start to embrace video, this content often gets prioritised and is seen by many more people*. On LinkedIn, some senior business leaders are building a big following using video. You can get a feel for this trend from pioneers such as Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Alex Mahon from Channel 4 and Blackstone’s president and chief operating officer, Jon Gray (who likes to record his thoughts while running in beautiful places 🏃🏻‍♂️).

To get some tips for newbies, I spoke (on video, obviously) to one of LinkedIn’s own stars, its chief operating officer, Dan Shapero. Dan often films himself walking through his Californian neighbourhood, and first started with a short, personal clip in the pandemic: “I shot a video walking from [my daughter’s] school back to my house and people really responded to it. People commented on it, saying that they’d had similar experiences of engaging with their kids in a different way now that they had more flexibility.”

Now, Dan posts from his business-related global travels, on topics such as LinkedIn’s financial results and AI advances, as well as the musings on walks near his home. How does he prepare? “I normally figure out the key message I want to say, and I might even pick a tagline, like a couple of words that I want to make sure I get just right. But beyond that, I’m really just doing it from a basic structure in my mind. It’s not scripted. And what I have found is that somewhere between two or three takes, I do get it just right. It feels natural, but not overly rehearsed.”

CEOs have to craft their communications carefully, and will usually have writers on hand to shape their messaging and (brace yourselves for the dread word) “thought leadership” 👀. Physically, the boss is generally hidden from staff and public view, behind layers of assistants and senior executives. A leader who records something impromptu as they wander along a street is very, very far from the carefully curated communications strategy. And it will probably send the comms team into a tailspin 🤯.

The upside? As Dan says: “There’s something about hearing your voice and seeing your face that builds trust, creates authenticity — and leaders are gravitating towards that.”

What should leaders talk about? “Think about something you shared with your team in a recent team meeting and just put that into a video and share it on the platform. I think people will really respond. And the other thing I suggest is that when people comment, engage in the comments. Even when people disagree with you, I think it’s a wonderful place to encourage conversation and debate. And I think leaders can role model what constructive conversation feels like.”

When I shared my enthusiasm with my FT colleagues about the idea of leaders going all-in on video, there was some disquiet about a possible future where CEOs might be required to become video stars as part of the job spec. There are plenty of brilliant leaders out there who have no desire to put themselves in front of a camera. It’s a shallow metric by which to judge a CEO when they carry vast financial responsibility.

That’s a good point — but with trust in people and institutions now at a premium, getting personal with viewers who are also your staff and customers does seem to be a sweet spot for leaders who can do it well 🏆. As Dan says, since he started recording videos, “people [at LinkedIn offices around the world] engage with me differently. They stand a little closer. They open themselves up a little bit more to me. They talk to me like they know me.”

I’d love to hear about other leaders who have built a big video following — is anyone even . . . funny? I’ll share the best ones here: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

*QED: My best-performing LinkedIn post ever was a one-take video shot in the FT bathroom when I was feeling low (155,000 views).

Office Therapy

The problem: I’m a public sector worker reading about workforce reductions, for example in the civil service and the NHS, and am getting worried. What can I do to prepare in case I lose my job?

Isabel’s advice: You aren’t alone in this. I’ve heard similar concerns from all sorts of people. Your initial feelings will probably be outrage and helplessness. You are human, and this is a threat to your survival (or so your body and mind think). All of this is outside your control, and it’s important to remember that.

I went to an expert, Jonathan Black, director of the careers service at Oxford university, for some practical advice for you. Jonathan suggests that you: “focus on what’s inside your zone of control: your skills, experience, contacts, knowhow and how you react to the threatened changes. While waiting for an axe to fall, you can assemble your resources. Polish your CV — focus on your achievements and responsibilities. Draft an 80-100 word summary that you can use when introducing yourself to people. You may wish to update your LinkedIn profile, particularly if that is a useful platform for your skills and industry.

“Start to write a list of people to get in touch with, and maybe start having some coffee meetings. You might also see this enforced change as just the push you need to change: join a new organisation, or go to a new region or country.”

Got a problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Email isabel.berwick@ft.com. We anonymise everything, properly.

US workplace insights: How to use meetings to do . . . actual work 👏🏼

I learned this week that people are starting to use meeting time to produce more work, rather than just sharing updates on what they’ve been doing. The insight comes from Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief at Charter, the future of work media and research company.

He cites the example of a team that writes technical white papers at Dow, the materials science company. They schedule meetings to discuss the topic of a coming white paper and give the transcript of their discussions to an AI tool that creates a first draft of the paper. This approach eliminates a lot of the back-and-forth in the early stages.

Kevin’s team at Charter decided to give this idea a go: they gave an AI tool the transcript of a kick-off meeting where the goals and format of a forthcoming conference were discussed, and asked it to craft an agenda for the day. “It wasn’t perfect,” Kevin says, “but it gave us a very good starting point and some ideas we might not have had”.

I love this 😍. More examples welcome.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. The AI chatbots offering workplace counsel: Emma Jacobs offers a fascinating and comprehensive overview of a fast-growing sector: the world of AI-based workplace coaching. Democratising or dangerous?

2. How to spot a low performer: A huge hit with FT readers, Pilita Clark’s column outlines the problem with performance reviews and the wider issue with assessing a person’s value to their employer. Wild comments section, too.

3. Nuclear plant boss Julia Pyke: ‘It’s a tough gig, developing big infrastructure projects in the UK’: A fascinating insight by Anjli Raval and Rachel Millard into what it’s like to co-run a planned nuclear power project, trying to balance competing stakeholders and anti-nuclear campaigns.

4. Doge’s ‘villain fantasy’ is wrong about public service: Simon Kuper takes on the prevalent narrative in the US that public servants are useless and the spending fraudulent. As he demonstrates, people go into it for the public good.

5. Has Goldman Sachs already chosen its next CEO? Settle in for Joshua Franklin’s satisfying deep dive into the Goldman succession saga — with lots of extra information about the “nearly” CEOs in this and other banks.

One more thing . . . 

Hedge funds are paying up to $1mn to employ weather experts. Yes, you read that right — commodities trading is heavily influenced by the weather. And where there’s a financial gain, there’s a job. There are likely to be a lot more weather scientists looking for work after Donald Trump’s government gutted government agencies in the US, and hedge funds are hiring — with excellent salaries on offer. Story from Bloomberg (🎁 link.)

A word from the Working It community

I was star-struck when the poet Craig Raine responded to last week’s “poetry at work” newsletter with this perfect quote about the ways great poetry (in this case Wordsworth 🌼) can help us make sense of things:

“The classic case is John Stuart Mill. In ‘A Crisis in My Mental History’, chapter five of his Autobiography (1874): ‘what made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of . . . The result was that I gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it’.”

With my thanks to Craig — and to everyone else who wrote in.

Before you log off …

Sophie Heawood is a great writer and interviewer, so I was delighted to see The Sophist newsletter on Substack. It is as funny as I’d expect, but also an honest reflection on the hard, bittersweet business of parenting a teenager. Bonus: Sophie also writes a pleasingly voyeuristic property newsletter. The Rightmove Roundup 🏠 is perfect when you need a break from the interminable emails and messaging 😥.