By Janus Boye
John Stepper is the founder of "Working Out Loud" and focuses on helping individuals and companies make the most of all they have to offer
In our peer groups it’s quite normal that we from time to time take a departure from the all the digital talk, and shift to a career perspective. Questions and personal reflections about roles and tenure are frequent. In particular after 5+ years at the same company, the joking begins that either you leave now or you are staying for life. From time to time, there’s also members wondering whether to make a big career change and do something entirely different.
New York City-based John Stepper stayed for an impressive 18+ years in management roles at Deutsche Bank and almost clocked 30 years of managing teams in large, global companies and then his career took a massive turn.
Back in 2015, he published his now seminal book Working Out Loud. Based on the reception of the book, he then left the bank in 2016 to go pursue his dream of making work better, peer learning and improving the social bond at work - all based on what he’s preaching in the book.
John was also a highly-rated keynote speaker at the Boye Philadelphia 2016 conference, a previous guest speaker in a groups and he’s our expert of the month.
Publishing Working Out Loud - a short, powerful, important book
John signed this copy of Working Out Loud back in 2017 when he was a guest star at a peer group meeting in Germany
Working Out Loud (WOL) was born from John’s feeling that he had more to offer and also that companies have more to offer. There had to be something better than the usual career roulette as he described it in a recent conversation.
When the book came out in 2015, the methodology was based on each employee having a voice, building their own network and progressively making work better, both for you and for the company. Since then the method has been improved, more on that shortly.
Actually the term Working Out Loud comes from Bryce Williams who in blog post from 2010 coined the term and described it like this:
Working Out Loud = Observable Work + Narrating Your Work
In short: Working out loud is all about thinking differently about achieving our goals and the approach offers the recipe to successfully pursue your goal. It’s really a social learning recipe.
My colleague Tim Jessen shared a post titled Working out loud to achieve your goals back in 2017 based on a guest star appearance by John at a group meeting in Germany.
How does Working out Loud (WOL) work then? You work on one individual goal that intrinsically motivates you at the time over a guided simple and structured course of 12 weeks. You are not alone, but work in small groups – or in WOL terms “circles” – of 4-5 people. Every member works on her or his individual goal and supports the other in weekly meetings over the course of 12 weeks. The aim of it all is to change the underlying assumption of how we relate to each other and the work we do.
Making Working Out Loud better
Today WOL is used by large, complex and global and for some reason, it’s in particular been popular in Germany. The material is available in 5 languages and the 2nd edition of the popular book came out in 2020.
As John said:
The shared denominator among the enterprises adopting WOL alongside the many certified WOL coaches is a sense of self determination. I matter, I make a difference, I am able to build connections.
Working Out Loud as a company is now more focused to HR departments than in the past and WOL is now also applied to other goals in the workplace, including resilience and team collaboration.
Moving the needle is what drives John and he aims to combat the widespread sense of isolation inside many businesses. There’s a real sense of detachment which carries tremendous lost potential.
Practising together, also when it comes to AI
So, John really wants people to practice and change their habits. Work tasks is not just something you are supposed to do and then move on, John wants you to literally work out load and actually have this experience together with other people.
Turning to AI, the big topic of the year already, John said that it’s still early days and then he continued:
2 things are clear on AI:
1) Many jobs will disappear
2) We are woefully underprepared
John believes in giving people tools so that they can explore and adapt. Enable them to cultivate networks and access other possibilities, and to me this seems very timely in this age of AI.
On the ever changing topic of AI, John also pointed to what he referred to as the Trust Crisis. As the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer concluded earlier this year: “Business is the only institution seen as competent and ethical.”. In John’s words:
“Trust is an increasingly rare commodity and Developing trusted relationships is a game changer in both the workplace and people’s lives.”
Learn more about John Stepper and Working Out Loud
Curious about how a large, complex and international organisation has put this into practice. Check out the case study on WOL and Vodafone.
If you prefer video, then John took the stage at a TEDx conference 7 years ago and shared “Working Out Loud: The making of a movement”.