Most companies say they care about people. Then they design everything like humans are inconvenient interruptions to the spreadsheet.
Stela Lupushor’s spent her career fixing that. She’s on a mission to bring humanity back to the workplace. Not the “we have a ping pong table” kind. The actual kind.
In this episode, Stela talks with Chris about how her background in math and computer science (stay with me) led her to realize we’ve been optimizing for efficiency and forgetting people are, you know, people.
What They Actually Talk About
Traditional management styles are getting exposed. New generations aren’t buying the “just be grateful you have a job” line. And tech is forcing the question: what are humans actually for?
Stela’s answer? Curiosity and creativity. The stuff AI can’t do. Yet.
She talks about playful experimentation as a way to figure out new tech (like AI) without losing your mind. How learning works better when it’s personalized. And why “serious work” and “playfulness” aren’t opposites.
There’s also a bit about AI co-pilots potentially helping preserve company culture while freeing humans up to do work that actually matters. (Instead of spending 40% of your week in meetings that could’ve been emails.)
And they wrap with something that sounds soft but isn’t: recognizing people as complex humans, not just their job title. Because when you only see someone as “Head of Marketing,” you’re missing most of what makes them useful.
Playfulness helps with that. Turns out it’s easier to see someone’s full humanity when they’re not performing “professional” all the time.
Listen
(Or don’t. But Stela’s smart and this one’s worth it.)