Track Changes On Podcast

Episode summary: Why the Worst Business Decisions All Fail This Simple Test
Why do so many companies keep making decisions that seem to defy common sense? Some of the worst business decisions aren’t necessarily made by inexperienced or incompetent people. Often, there’s a perfectly rational explanation for how the company got there.
This episode of Track Changes On looks at why business fails and corporate fails can happen even when the individual decisions behind them make sense. We look at the organisational research behind local rationality and goal displacement, and how breaking complex problems into smaller pieces can sometimes leave nobody looking at the whole picture. 
We also look at what these decisions tell us about corporate culture and leadership, using the Australian idea of the ‘pub test’ to ask a simple question: does this decision still make sense when you step outside the organisation and look at the whole picture? It’s a useful way to understand some of the contradictions that make corporate culture so frustrating for the people working inside it. 
In this episode
* Why rational corporate decisions can produce outcomes that seem absurd
* What the Australian ‘pub test’ can tell us about corporate decision-making
* Famous business fails that made sense internally but failed the common sense test
* Why Netflix’s Qwikster decision became such a high-profile corporate failure
* What Vegemite iSnack 2.0 can teach us about internal corporate logic
* Why companies break complex decisions into smaller pieces
* How local rationality can make each piece of a decision seem reasonable while the overall outcome doesn’t
* Why following the right corporate process doesn’t necessarily produce the right outcome
* The role leadership teams play in stepping back and looking at the whole picture
* Why social media has effectively become the modern version of the pub test
Research referenced in this episode
Richard M. Cyert and James G. March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (1963). Cyert and March’s work helps explain the idea of local rationality. Large organisations manage complexity by dividing problems between different parts of the business, each working with its own goals, information and constraints. This can mean individual decisions make sense within a particular function while their combined effect is less rational when viewed across the organisation as a whole. 
Robert K. Merton, Bureaucratic Structure and Personality (1940), Social Forces. Merton’s work on bureaucratic structures introduced the concept of goal displacement. Rules and processes created to achieve an objective can gradually become objectives in themselves, with adherence to the process taking precedence over whether it produces the intended outcome. 
Herbert A. Simon, A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice (1955), Quarterly Journal of Economics. Simon’s work on bounded rationality explains why people and organisations rely on simplified models, procedures and ‘good enough’ solutions rather than considering every possible consequence of a decision. In large organisations, those structures help people manage complexity but can also narrow what individual decision-makers see and consider relevant. 
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Episode summary: How to tell if you're a victim of gaslighting at work
Have you ever had something happen at work where the gap between what you remember and what your boss says happened is so big that you start questioning yourself? Gaslighting at work can be difficult to recognise, particularly when the same behaviours can also come from bad managers, dysfunctional systems or a corporate culture that’s toxic.
This episode of Track Changes On looks at the research actually says about workplace gaslighting, how to recognise a pattern and why intent may matter less than the impact the behaviour is having on you.
We also look at what gaslighting can tell us about corporate culture more broadly. If you’re interested in corporate culture explained, organisational culture explained or company culture explained through the behaviours people actually experience at work, this episode gets into what happens when an organisation allows reality to become something employees are expected to negotiate.
In this episode
* What gaslighting at work actually means
* What gaslighting from a boss can look like
* Why one strange interaction doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being gaslit
* How repeated denial, contradiction and blame can develop into a pattern
* Why intent isn’t necessarily required for workplace gaslighting
* How bad managers and a toxic corporate culture can contribute to the problem
* How to recognise when you’re starting to doubt your own judgement
* Why documenting behaviour can be more useful than trying to prove someone’s intent
* What to do if you think you’re experiencing gaslighting at work
Research referenced in this episode
Kukreja and Pandey, Workplace Gaslighting: Conceptualization, Development, and Validation of a Scale (2023), Frontiers in Psychology. This study developed a workplace-specific measure of gaslighting based on supervisor-employee relationships. The researchers identified behaviours including denying previous promises, misrepresenting what an employee has said, undermining complaints and telling someone they’re imagining things. The study identified two dimensions of workplace gaslighting: trivialisation and affliction. 
Kincaid and Stalion, An Interdisciplinary Review of the Gaslighting Literature and Future Research Agenda (2026), Journal of Organizational Behavior. This review describes gaslighting as a pattern of repeated manipulative interactions that accumulates over time and destabilises someone’s confidence in their own interpretation or perception of reality. Importantly, the authors don’t treat deliberate intent as a requirement, recognising that these patterns can also emerge through routine, defensive or institutionally reinforced behaviour. 
The review also examines the potential harm associated with gaslighting, including increasing self-doubt, reduced self-trust and internalised blame. Workplace consequences discussed in the literature include withdrawal, silence, absenteeism and turnover intentions. 
Paige L. Sweet, The Sociology of Gaslighting (2019), American Sociological Review. Sweet examines gaslighting through the lens of social relationships and power, arguing that it needs to be understood in the context of structural and institutional inequalities rather than solely as an individual psychological behaviour. The paper focuses on intimate relationships rather than workplaces but provides an important foundation for understanding the role of power in gaslighting.
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Episode summary: The weird psychology behind corporate meeting culture
Corporate culture has a strange relationship with meetings. We complain about having too many of them, joke that they could have been an email and block out hours of our working week to attend them. Yet meetings remain deeply embedded in how companies communicate, make decisions and manage work.
So why do companies have so many meetings?
There’s some fascinating psychology behind meeting culture. Meetings make work highly visible, can create a sense that progress is being made and can change how responsibility for decisions feels when those decisions are made collectively. They’re also influenced by organisational hierarchy, including who gets invited, who gets heard and whose opinion carries the most weight.
This episode of Track Changes On looks at corporate culture through the psychology of meetings and asks why something so many employees complain about remains such a dominant part of working life.
It also explores the relationship between meetings and workplace productivity. In knowledge work, some of our most valuable work can be difficult to observe. Thinking, writing, analysing information or solving a difficult problem may look like very little from the outside. A meeting, by comparison, is highly visible: calendars are full, people are talking and everyone appears busy.
That raises an interesting question about productivity culture. Are meetings always helping us do the work, or can talking about the work sometimes become a substitute for doing it?
Of course, meetings have a legitimate role in company culture. Synchronous conversations can help people work through complex problems, respond to each other in real time and make use of social cues that are harder to reproduce asynchronously. The problem comes when meetings become the default rather than a deliberate choice.
So how can you tell when a meeting is doing useful work? And what might our reliance on meetings tell us about organisational culture more broadly?
In this episode
* Why meetings are so deeply embedded in corporate culture
* The psychology behind why meetings can feel productive
* How meetings make work and employee activity more visible
* Why collective decision-making can change how responsibility feels
* How hierarchy and status influence what happens inside meetings
* Why meeting culture can reduce the time available for focused work
* What synchronous conversations genuinely do well
* How to decide whether something actually needs a meeting
Research referenced in this episode
Rogelberg, Kreamer and Gray, Thirty Years of Meeting Science: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead (2026), Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. A review of decades of meeting research examining what makes meetings effective, how people behave within them and the role of factors including hierarchy and status in meeting participation.
Research on shared responsibility in collective decision-making (2019). Research examining how responsibility changes when people make decisions collectively rather than individually. The literature suggests that sharing a decision with others can reduce some of the psychological burden associated with personal responsibility and affect feelings such as regret following a decision.
Otter.ai and Steven Rogelberg, meeting research (2022). A study of 632 employees examining meeting attendance and the financial cost associated with meeting time. The research estimated substantial organisational expenditure on meetings, including meetings employees believed they could skip if they were kept informed about what happened. These figures are estimates based on survey responses and salary assumptions rather than direct measures of financial loss.
Research on synchronous communication and social presence. Research into synchronous communication examines the value of immediate interaction and access to social and paralinguistic cues, including tone, facial expressions and other information that can be harder to communicate asynchronously.
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Toxic Workplace Culture: Why “We’re Like a Family Here” Is a Red Flag
“We’re like a family here.” It’s a phrase that appears in job ads, interviews and conversations about corporate culture, and for some people it’s an immediate red flag.
There are plenty of familiar signs of a toxic work environment, from micromanagement and excessive approval processes to workplace rules built around the assumption that employees can’t be trusted. Yet some of these toxic workplace behaviours point to a broader dynamic that gets far less attention: companies hiring capable adults, giving them significant responsibilities and then treating them as though they still need permission, supervision or verification to make ordinary decisions.
There’s a term for this: workplace infantilisation. It overlaps with micromanagement and paternalistic management, but it can also be embedded in corporate culture rather than coming from one toxic or micromanaging boss. Research into workplace paternalism has even examined the familiar “we’re like a family here” metaphor, including the way it can position managers as parental figures and employees as the children.
This episode of Track Changes On looks at the strange amount of permission-seeking we accept as a normal part of corporate life, from asking another adult for permission to take leave to needing approval for decisions that sit comfortably within our professional expertise.
It also explores the contradiction between companies telling employees to take ownership while creating environments where asking permission is safer than exercising independent judgement. Research on autonomy at work suggests this distinction matters: autonomy-supportive leadership is associated with stronger motivation, engagement, job satisfaction and wellbeing.
So what happens when a workplace says it trusts its employees, while its management practices communicate something very different? And could some of the behaviour managers complain about, including employees constantly seeking approval or refusing to make decisions, actually be behaviour the workplace has taught them?
In this episode
* What workplace infantilisation means and how it differs from micromanagement
* Why “we’re like a family here” can create an uncomfortable parent-child dynamic at work
* How excessive approval and permission-seeking can become part of corporate culture
* Why employees may stop taking ownership when independent decisions repeatedly get questioned
* What research tells us about employee autonomy, motivation and workplace wellbeing
* How to distinguish legitimate workplace accountability from unnecessary control
* Why toxic workplace behaviours don’t always come from a toxic boss
Research referenced in this episode
Slemp et al., Leader autonomy support in the workplace: A meta-analytic review (2018), Motivation and Emotion. A meta-analysis of 72 studies examining autonomy-supportive leadership. The research found positive associations with autonomous motivation, job satisfaction, engagement and wellbeing, alongside negative associations with workplace distress.
Alakavuklar, “We Are a Family” – A Critical Organizational Discourse Analysis (2009). Examines the use of family language within organisations and its relationship with paternalistic management. The paper discusses how the family metaphor can position managers as parental figures who direct and supervise employees while creating expectations around loyalty and obedience.
Casey, “Come, Join Our Family”: Discipline and Integration in Corporate Organizational Culture (1999). Research examining the use of “family” and “team” metaphors in corporate culture and their relationship with organisational discipline and control. Rather than assuming family-oriented cultures necessarily empower employees, Casey examines how these cultural practices can regulate employee behaviour.
Oravec, research on employee infantilisation and workplace monitoring (2024). Uses “employee infantilization” to describe constraints on employee agency, including situations where organisations effectively determine employees’ needs or treat their judgement as diminished.
Reid, Industrial Paternalism: Discourse and Practice in Nineteenth-Century French Mining and Metallurgy (1985), Comparative Studies in Society and History. Examines the much longer history of paternalistic employment relationships and the use of family relationships to frame employer authority and worker dependency.
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Episode summary: Why are women still told to watch their tone at work?
Companies say they want strong female leaders. Yet women are still more likely to receive workplace feedback about their personality, communication style and likeability.
The problem is easy to dismiss as a question of behaviour. Sometimes people are rude, aggressive or difficult at work and managers should address it. The more interesting question is why research consistently finds women receiving different kinds of feedback from men, including more criticism focused on personality rather than specific skills or outcomes.
In this episode of Track Changes On, Caroline Warnes looks at the unwritten behavioural rules women learn to navigate at work, from being told to watch their tone or appear more approachable to expectations around smiling, appearance and being pleasant. Drawing on her own experience of learning to mask and manage criticism long before entering corporate life, she explores what happens when women start anticipating these expectations and policing themselves.
She also looks at the research on gendered performance feedback, the competence-likeability double bind and emotional labour, and asks whether this additional behavioural workload may be one part of a much bigger story about why women find corporate work exhausting.
In this episode
- Why women receive more personality-based feedback at work- The difference between legitimate behavioural feedback and vague criticism about “tone”- Why assertive women can face a likeability penalty- How women learn to manage smiling, warmth and approachability at work- The additional emotional demands women can experience in corporate environments- What burnout and unpaid-work data can and cannot tell us about women’s exhaustion
Research referenced in this episode
Kieran Snyder, The Abrasiveness Trap: High-Achieving Men and Women Are Described Differently in Reviews (2014). Analysis of 248 performance reviews from 28 technology companies. The study found personality criticism in 71 of 94 critical reviews received by women compared with two of 83 received by men.
Textio, Language Bias in Performance Feedback (2024). Analysis of more than 23,000 performance reviews across more than 250 organisations found women received 22% more personality-based feedback than men. Note: this is large-scale workplace research rather than a peer-reviewed academic study.
Jampol, Rattan & Wolf, A Bias Toward Kindness Goals in Performance Feedback to Women (2023), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Across experimental studies and field data, researchers found feedback givers placed greater emphasis on kindness when giving critical feedback to women, associated with stereotypes about women's warmth.
LaFrance, Hecht & Paluck, The Contingent Smile: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Smiling (2003), Psychological Bulletin. A meta-analysis covering 143 reports and more than 59,000 participants found women smiled more than men on average, with the difference varying substantially according to social context.
Purvanova & Muros, Gender Differences in Burnout: A Meta-Analysis (2010), Journal of Vocational Behavior. Across 183 studies, women showed slightly higher emotional exhaustion while men showed higher depersonalisation. The average gender difference in emotional exhaustion was small.
Gallup, workplace burnout data (2025). Among full-time US workers surveyed in Q4 2025, 31% of women compared with 23% of men reported feeling burned out very often or always. Across 2022–2025, the reported rate among women leaders averaged 29% compared with 19% among men leaders.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, How Australians Use Their Time (2024). Among Australians performing unpaid work, women averaged 4 hours 53 minutes per day compared with 3 hours 52 minutes for men. Mothers of children under 15 also spent more time caring for children than fathers.
Ybema et al., systematic review of gender differences in exposure to psychosocial work factors (2023). While gender differences were inconsistent across many workplace stressors, all seven included studies examining emotional demands reported higher exposure among women.
Companion article
This episode is accompanied by a full article on Track Changes On, where the ideas, research and practical reflections are explored in greater depth.
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