I am just back from seeing Andy Karl in Groundhog Day at The Old Vic theatre in London.  I had seen the show before in 2016 when Tim Minchin and Director Matthew Warchus first collaborated with writer Danny Rubin to revitalise and reimagine Rubin’s original 1993 movie, starring Bill Murray.  Karl plays a TV weatherman called Phil Connors, whom we meet grumpily reporting on the quirky festivities of Punxsutawney, a small American town in the middle-of nowhere.  Desperate to leave, Connors gets stuck in a time loop and awakens everyday on 2 February, endlessly trapped with the same people, in the same place.

In order to prevent being forced to live the same day over and over again, Connors must change the way he approaches life, and the world around him, divesting himself of his cynicism, narcissism, and misogyny.  It’s quite some arc to achieve in just over two hours and although The Old Vic bills the show as a “zany musical” their blurb undersells the impact and quality of the human story that unfolds.  Yes, the show is hilarious, full of visual jokes, corny tomfoolery and drunken fun, but in the behaviour of the risible Connors it also holds up a mirror to ourselves; obsessing about tomorrow, not today, neglecting old friends, avoiding our neighbours, shunning the homeless, denigrating colleagues and undervaluing those who serve us in jobs we would detest to do ourselves.  The second half is deeply moving, thought provoking and profound.  The show’s finale is a beautifully crafted expression of some enormous truths about people, relationships and the meaning of life.

Connors finds that personal change is tremendously hard, if not impossible. In this repetitive parallel universe he is not even given the option of seeking oblivion.  Poignantly and pathetically he still wakes in Punxsutawney, living again without purpose.  The audience knows what he needs to do (change himself) but he still cannot do it and so knuckles down to hard work, in an endless attempt to work his way out of the problem.  He learns to fix cars, memorise the almanac, learn French, recite poetry, become a virtuoso pianist and a doctor, waking every day and working hard at fixing stuff, and others and things - but not himself.  Despite his own immortality and his boast “that I am some kind of God”, he cannot stop the homeless guy from dying, he cannot deceive his colleague Rita into loving him, he cannot change tomorrow despite (in his words) “knowing everything”.  It is not until he realises that he “knows nothing”, that the dawn breaks in a different way.   

An addiction to futile pursuits is difficult to shake and Connors’ commitment and work ethic is admirable, but also familiarly insane.  Albert Einstein was once (implausibly) credited with saying “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Using the original 1993 film, some eminent online-film nerds have spent much effort trying to calculate how many days it takes Connors to re-awaken, a new man, on 3 February.  I was too busy laughing in the theatre to count the number of times Connors experiences the same day, but in the film he appears in, or describes his experiences of some 64 different days.  But he also learns numerous new skills while stuck in the time loop.  He confesses it would take him 'six months, four to five hours a day' (244 days) to become an expert card thrower.  In an article for WhatCulture, Simon Gallagher cites Gladwell’s hypothesis that it takes anyone “10,000 hours to become an expert at any one subject” and Connors becomes an expert in many, including delivering babies, bank robbery, piano  playing and ice-sculpting.  Simon surmises that since Connors “is an adult learner, a conservative estimate, based on the idea of him taking lessons every day, it would have taken somewhere around 12 years to become completely fluent bringing the running total to 12,315 days”. That is some 33 years stuck in an endless loop of futile self-improvement.  Sound familiar?

Well, here are three applications for the modern world of work:

1. Self-improvement is futile

The corporate world seems obsessed with a similar reliance on self-improvement, encouraging you to dedicate time to build your professional credentials, harness your authentic self, learn to communicate with radical candour, grow a diverse network, and act out, while leaning in.  As you progress towards the top team, you are expected to become better equipped, using influencing skills, showing yourself to be both resilient and agile, navigating cultural and intergenerational minefields, while remaining entrepreneurial, inclusive, emotionally intelligent, and ensuring that psychological safety flourishes in your wake. It is exhausting, unreasonable and mind-boggling to even consider the hours of time and sheer bloody dedication needed to manage and lead these days. Ultimately though, no matter how many hours we put in, we still risk continuing to appear a complete jerk like Connors.

2. Flunking is the new achieving

A new generation of workers see the world differently.  The current vogue is to disregard the competence addiction of the past, embrace Einstein’s advice and take a more entrepreneurial approach, dreaming big initially, but failing fast forwards, learning and pivoting again.  Modern careers can seem an episodic pursuit of not being great, realising it, and quickly moving on to the next thing.  Spending 10,000 hours on anything sans-purpose, let alone spending that amount of time with the same firm, is now anathema.  Some more heartless than I would call this a new emergent culture of mediocrity, but now the fail fast, or more caustically put, ‘faff around and find out’, is the early twenty first century mode du jour of working.  According to Gallop, new employees entering employment are likely to change jobs as many as ten times between the ages of 18 and 34. Perhaps the contemporary early career path is less a ‘squiggly’ drawn one and more akin to something painted by Jackson Pollock? 

3. Being inexpert is the goal

But being inexpert is not be sniffed at.  It is one of the most intriguing dimensions of future talent and people management.  In the world of the ‘never normal’ where generative AI can write your presentation, design the images and draft the cover note to the CEO in minutes, the key to a professional career is no longer about knowing everything, it is about knowing nothing.  Peter Hinssen argues you actually need more people in your organisation who “don’t know what they’re doing.”  His is not some ironic plea for the virtue of ignorance, but for more of your very best people working on ideas and projects and plans where the outcome is unknown and not discovered in the algorithm.  Experience matters less when future innovation is to be found where there is no well trodden path to follow, where there is no blue-print that can be downloaded, or co-opted from a well paid consultant.  This is a mission for talent that takes them off the garden path into the wilderness and the rainforest.

After the show

As is my tendency, I have somewhat clunkily navigated out of the snow drifts of Punxsutawney into another muse about the “future of work”.  But I think the learning from Groundhog Day is hugely relevant for the humdrum world of modern work.

I have been working for the past couple of years trying to decode the current trends of workplace dissociation and dislocation. There are many fault lines; flat-lining productivity (despite everyone working longer, harder), poor employee engagement (despite hybrid working and an employer arms race of flexible benefits), work itself not working (as an inflation and the cost of living clobbers any sense of reward), a misalignment between older and new entrants to the workplace, and an over-reliance on remote-working tech to somehow create the magical collaborative juice, that was once found serendipitously by colleagues who often became personally close and cohered to one another.

Given this context, I have become convinced that we need a different type of leadership for the way we now work and live our lives. I have written some structured thoughts on that (with some substantiated evidence) in my book called GLUE.  One of the punchlines of the book is similar to Connors’ own revelation; when he takes a moment to pause, look over his shoulder and open his eyes to fully see the people around him.   The last act of Groundhog Day explores Connors’ literal awakening to the importance of others near to hand, and the enormous value of taking the time and effort to get to know them as people.  The same insight was found in my research about those “glue creating” leaders who galvanised others, engendered loyalty and created lasting collaborative networks.  These leaders spent less energy obsessed with self-improvement, trying to acquire knowledge, or insider-smarts, or political power, but invested themselves in getting to know their people well by listening, respecting their views, knowing their names, celebrating their achievements, remembering their kids’ names.

Towards the end of Groundhog Day, Connors is challenged by Rita, and he spends a day getting to realise the value of the people he has been gifted to be amongst everyday.  Now, rather than be treated dismissively and seen as a series of caricatures, costumes and nameless ensemble cast members, they become Ned, Nancy, Freddie, Debbie, Joelle, Ralph, Gus, Doris and Buster. 

The next morning, Phil (Connors) and Rita watch the sunrise, and Phil is transformed.

Groundhog Day with Andy Karl is playing at The Old Vic until 19 August 2023.

GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World is published by Routledge and is available for pre-order now and released on 4th October 2023.