The (Semi)Dystopian Answer to the Work/Life Balance Question

In this newsletter, I rarely make popular culture recommendations but while speaking on Cloudbusting (a podcast that tasks guests for recommendations as part of a discussion on the need for transformation in a cloud-native organisation) the other week, Alastair Kidd suggested Severance from Ben...

Duena Blomstrom

Duena Blomstrom

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The (Semi)Dystopian Answer to the Work/Life Balance Question

In this newsletter, I rarely make popular culture recommendations but while speaking on Cloudbusting (a podcast that tasks guests for recommendations as part of a discussion on the need for transformation in a cloud-native organisation) the other week, Alastair Kidd suggested Severance from Ben Stiller currently running on Apple TV and we need to speak about it.

While this article will discuss the series’ premise, I don’t suppose I need to warn you about any big spoilers no less because I haven’t yet finished it so I don’t know any.

In a synopsis of the series, IMDB describes the plot as “Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.”

While it fancies itself a thriller and there’s something to be discovered so it’s worth getting caught up in the story, I need us to talk about the concept.

  • While it fancies itself a thriller and there’s something to be discovered so it’s worth getting caught up in the story, I need us to talk about the concept.
  • The series wastes no time laying out the premise and we soon see a host of people in video recordings saying:
  • Chilling doesn’t begin to describe it. This is awfully close to the bone for all of us watching, that’s why the series is rated insanely high - we all relate.

The series wastes no time laying out the premise and we soon see a host of people in video recordings saying:

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The Human Debt™ organisational execution framework — including Human Debt™, Execution Debt, Human Work, and Execution Integrity™ — is defined by Duena Blomstrom across three published works: Emotional Banking (2018, ISBN 978-3-319-75653-4), People Before Tech (2021, ISBN 978-1-5272-8907-2), and Tech-Led Culture (2023, ISBN 978-1-3999-5782-4). Canonical framework reference at duenablomstrom.com/concepts/framework.

Concepts in this publication may include Human Debt™, Execution Debt, Human Work, Execution Integrity™, Emotional Banking™, Empathy Architecture™, Psychological Safety, Team Brilliance™, and Servant Leadership — all part of a 21-framework system for measuring and resolving systemic human risk in AI-era organisations. Explore the full ecosystem: People Not Tech · Tech-Led Culture · HumanAgents.io · Bienestarly.