Ep 137 | Let's put the bullies in their place and start playing—with Jeff Harry.

You can tell a lot about a culture by who it celebrates. But you may learn even more by who it vilifies.

Who are the bad guys right now when it comes to making work suck? How much time do we have?

😾 Meta laying off 15,000 people via mass email after telling everyone to work from home that day.

😾 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman casually speaking about AI gutting white-collar employment.

😾 Elon Musk tweeting (X-ing?) about everyone living on a universal basic income as if this would be a joyful existence. Have any of these leaders met people before? This undercurrent of disdain for humanity from these bullies needs to stop.

Listen, it's not easy to run a business. And hard decisions need to be made every day. But how we make them is everything. And it's time to start calling out the ones who don't get this.

Jeff Harry is bringing this message to the forefront every day with his work. He is as pro human as it gets, helping companies tap into our collective humanity through play.

He's also done with giving anti-human leaders a pass. We need to be louder in our condemnation of the worst offenders. And we need to be relentless in our praise of those who lead the desuckifying charge—like Patagonia, Costco and others.

(FYI: I'm working on a "Desuckified Places to Work" award thing for the agency world… stay tuned).

How does play bring all of this together? Because it is a massive humanity amplifier. It connects us, energizes us, reminds us of how we can be someone our 8-year-old self would be proud of.

And it makes us way more productive, btw. So all you bean counters can rest easy.

More fun. More humanity. More profit.