The Future of Work, Culture & Purpose with Javier Bajer | Shekhar Natarajan

August 11, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Future of Work, Culture & Purpose with Javier Bajer

Javier Bajer, a cognitive psychologist and former Accenture partner who has spent decades inside organizations from police forces to insurance companies, has come to a blunt conclusion about change management: "It's tiring, saucing, draining, expensive, and yet a bit pointless." After years of selling what he calls "snake oil solutions," he realized that the standard toolkit—surveys, focus groups, mission statements, PowerPoints—hasn't worked. The evidence is dire. Gallup engagement scores are at rock bottom: eleven percent in the US. "One of every ten people wants to go to work," he says. "Wait till my children make it into the workplace, it's gonna be zero."

Why the Standard Approach Fails

Bajer's argument rests on a simple observation: humans don't change because we tell them to. "You take the iPad away if your kids spend too much time doing that. As soon as you turn around, nothing changed." The same principle applies in organizations. People speed up when they pass a speed camera, not because they understand the danger. The moment the camera is gone, they speed up again.

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What you'll learn

1 Navigation Outline
2 (00:00) **Why Change Management Is Broken** - Javier argues that traditional change management is expensive, draining, and often pointless because it relies on telling people to change rather than understanding how humans actually work
3 (08:39) **Formative Years and the First Good Mentor** - Javier shares his immigrant family background in Argentina and the pivotal mentors who shaped his path
4 (14:47) **From Systems Thinking to Neuroscience** - Javier explains how his career path led from IT to studying the brain, driven by the need to understand the hardware behind human behavior
5 (20:20) **The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Becoming a Policeman** - Javier describes his first major project: understanding police culture after a high-profile racism case
6 (26:30) **The BT Call Center: When Culture Contradicts Itself** - A concrete example of how organizational incentives create a "bipolar" culture where people know what's right but do what's wrong
7 (32:55) **Profit on Purpose** - Javier introduces his core framework: purpose aligns culture, not slogans or mission statements

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Shekhar Natarajan

Show Notes

In this episode of Tomorrow Today, Shekhar Natarajan sits down with Javier Bajer for a deep conversation about culture, human behaviour, purpose, leadership and the future of work.

In this episode, they explore:

Why traditional change management often fails to create lasting transformation.
Why telling people to change rarely changes their behaviour.
The difference between an organisation’s stated values and the behaviours that actually shape its culture.
How culture is created through everyday conversations, environments and interactions.
Why understanding an organisation may require going beyond surveys and interviews and observing how people actually behave.
How incentives can unintentionally encourage the wrong behaviours.
Why organisations shouldn't assume they have one single culture, but instead recognise the different cultures that exist across teams and environments.
The role of purpose in creating alignment across an organisation.
Javier’s concept of Profit on Purpose and why profit should be an outcome rather than the sole reason an organisation exists.
Why leadership needs to focus on creating meaningful direction rather than simply communicating values.
What Javier learned from working with complex systems, institutions and organisations around the world.
How human behaviour and psychology can help organisations navigate transformation more effectively.
Why technology is not always the biggest challenge sometimes the real challenge is understanding the people using it.
How AI and technological disruption could change jobs and force people to rethink where they create value.
Why the future of work may require a different understanding of motivation, contribution and purpose.
The importance of mentors, formative experiences and the people who influence the direction of our lives.
Why humans are capable of learning, unlearning and changing behaviours when the environment around them changes.

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