Avsnitt
-
If you’ve been on LinkedIn this past month, you’ve likely seen at least one post (or more than you’d care to) about “founder mode.”
Presented as a counter to “manager mode” (meant to represent highly bureaucratic leadership rife with micromanaging and delegation), “founder mode” is all about championing the pioneering, hands-on behaviors of startup founders scaled to organizations of any size. And sure, when these are the only choices, anything that’s not “manager mode” sounds like a good option.
But show us a binary, and we’ll respond by asking tough questions. This week Rodney and Sam dig into how “founder mode” actually shows up in practice, whether it causes more organizational harm than good, and what it means when real leadership seems to be left out of the discussion entirely.
--------------------------------
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up here.
Follow us on your favorite platforms for more org design nerdery:
LinkedIn
Instagram
--------------------------------
Mentioned references:
Diane from Cheers
Founder Mode, article by Paul Graham
either/or thinking
Kim Scott's op-ed about founder mode
"people positivity episode": AWWTR Ep. 21
"strategy episode": AWWTR Ep. 2
"futures thinking" BNW Ep. 34 with Kevin Kelly
Depthfinding
John Cutler
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety
Andon cord -
Over the last nine years, The Ready has seen firsthand how organizations designed to be people positive (a.k.a. a foundational belief that people are eager to contribute and capable of change) outperform those that aren’t. Turns out when you treat people like adults, it boosts your team’s motivation, adaptability, and contribution.
The only catch? Unlearning nearly everything traditional leadership and management science has taught us for decades. Once beliefs like “People are lazy,” “People can’t be trusted,” and “People will actively abuse any flexibility they get” get baked into an organization’s culture, it’s tremendously hard to change. But not impossible.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam get candid about the fears that come with letting go of control, offer real-world examples to help skeptical leaders flip the script on trust, and explore how people positive principles can lead to long-term benefits.
--------------------------------
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up here.
Follow us on your favorite platforms for more org design nerdery:
LinkedIn
Instagram
--------------------------------
Mentioned references:
"the tower"
Theory Y vs Theory X
"Dan Pink stuff"
mastery: BNW Ep. 63
"psychological safety episode": AWWTR Ep. 20
"nature vs nurture"
"complexity conscious"
"discretionary spending discussion": AWWTR Ep. 16, question 3
negativity bias -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Psychological safety is a buzzy topic every company claims to want—but only a handful actually achieve. Sometimes, it’s misunderstood as being about “niceness” or “politeness”, but real psychological safety is deeper and more complex than that. It’s an ecosystem of behaviors that add up over time to impact how your team shows up day after day.
Unfortunately, this misconception has a stranglehold on most leadership teams as well, who spend more time talking the talk than walking the walk. We’ve seen and worked with many executive teams over the years where people didn’t feel comfortable speaking up, challenging ideas, admitting mistakes, or sharing concerns without fearing retribution or embarrassment. When that’s happening inside the team responsible for some of a business’s biggest decisions, there are big consequences.
In today’s episode, Rodney and Sam break down why leadership teams often feel the most psychologically unsafe, how to move the needle on developing trust, and why a ropes course can’t solve a team or organization’s culture problems.
(Producer’s note: Ok, so we're zero for two this week with Sam's mic going rogue after Rodney's mishap last episode. Taylor's been working some major magic lately. Hopefully third time's the charm with episode 21 🤞)
--------------------------------
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up here.
Follow us on your favorite platforms for more org design nerdery:
LinkedIn
Instagram
--------------------------------
Mentioned references:
What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (NYT, 2016)
”emperor has no clothes”
”leaders as org designers episode”: AWWTR Ep. 13
”hard vs soft power”
team charter
working agreements
”mundane episode”: AWWTR Ep. 19 -
While exploring bad meetings a few episodes ago, Rodney and Sam hit on something that doesn’t often get a lot of air time: the power of good habits and the discipline to care about the small things. Because when we’re trying to change companies on an atomic level, it can feel like small potatoes to focus on check-in rounds, or writing Slack messages, or how we compose to-do lists.
But you can’t run toward the future of work at full speed when your shoes aren’t properly tied. Here’s what we know: High-performing teams—from ice hockey to symphony orchestras—all prioritize the fundamentals. So why don’t we do that in the workplace?
In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into why building strong work habits are more important than you might think and the mundane but fundamental practices they start with.
(Producer’s note: We had a tech mishap during recording, so this week’s episode might sound a little different. We blame Rodney’s lake house ghost (more on that in the SXSW episode). We’ll be back to our usual sound next episode.)
--------------------------------
Interesting in hearing more about the zones of the ocean? We've got stuff coming soon! Sign up here for first access: https://theready.ck.page/newvision
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up here.
Follow us on your favorite platforms for more org design nerdery:
LinkedIn
Instagram
--------------------------------
Mentioned references:
"op rhythm": BNW EP. 118
"all work is now meetings": White-Collar Work Is Just Meetings Now, from The Atlantic, 2024
John Madden (the hockey one)
John Madden (the football one)
John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach
Atomic Habits, book by James Clear
Sunsama
80/20 rule
"5:1 praise to criticism": The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio, HBR, 2013
action meeting: BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin
retrospective meeting: BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney
check-in rounds
"don't say hey website": https://nohello.net/en/ inspired by https://www.nohello.com/
"Amazon memo meeting"
"silent meeting" -
No burying the lede this week: Employee engagement surveys are broken.
We expect them to tell us everything about a workplace’s culture—but they often miss the mark, capturing just a sliver of what's going on and usually only symptoms instead of underlying causes.
As leaders try to make sense of the data, there’s frequently a lot of smoke chasing, but nobody can tell where the fire is, or if there’s one at all. Add to that employee distrust around anonymity, spun-up initiatives to make changes that never go anywhere, and the fact that most surveys don’t even ask the right questions, and it’s no wonder everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline worker, suspects these surveys do more harm than good.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam explore what “engagement” actually means, what organizations should be measuring instead and why, and how to truly understand the health of your organization.
--------------------------------
Interesting in hearing more about the zones of the ocean? We've got stuff coming soon! Sign up here for first access: https://theready.ck.page/newvision
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up here.
Follow us on your favorite platforms for more org design nerdery:
LinkedIn
Instagram
-------------------------------
Mentioned references:
RACI episode: AWWTR Ep. 10
performance management episode: BNW Ep. 56
The Ready's OS Canvas
"complication" vs "complexity"
"state" vs "trait"
Marcus Buckingham -
We talk a lot about the importance of emergence—of being more comfortable with being uncomfortable. However, it’s hard to practice what you preach… especially for a podcast with a tight schedule. Normally, when one of two hosts is out of commission, you don’t record. But when this recently happened to us, we asked “How might we?” and took a big ol’ step into the unknown.
We’re glad we did, because this week’s guest is Dr. Jason Fox, a self-proclaimed wizard-philosopher, best-selling author, and senior leadership advisor to Fortune 500 companies around the world. In classic wizard-philosopher fashion, he and Sam throw out the script for a far-reaching conversation about the importance of rituals, the roles we play when we’re at work, and how embracing uncertainty is where the magic truly happens.
Learn more about Jason:
On his website
On LinkedIn
Read How to Lead A Quest or The Game Changer
Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for more org design nerdery!
Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].
Mentioned references:
Game Frame, book by Aaron Dignan
Brave New Work, book by Aaron Dignan
James Carse, author of Finite and Infinite Games
Rodney's "I am CEO vs I hold the role of CEO": AWWTR Ep. 14
Lands of Lorecraft, series of articles by Venkatesh Rao
Jevons Paradox
"rivalrous dynamics"
"multipolar traps"
"operating rhythm": BNW Ep. 118
Creativity, Inc., book by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
basilisk
"GTD": BNW Ep. 39 with David Allen
John Keats and "negative capability"
Antifragile, book by Nassim Taleb
"Metacrisis"
The Ministry for the Future, book by Kim Stanley Robinson
Children of Time, series by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Expanse, series by James S.A. Corey
The Culture, series by Iain M. Banks -
It’s mailbag time! We’ve been diving into specific problem areas every episode—and turns out if you go deep, your audience will go even deeper. Listeners, the questions you send us are getting hard! The ones that feel extra complex and extra tangly? We take those to the airwaves to unravel them live and share our knowledge back with you.
On today’s episode, Rodney and Sam tackle another batch of our audience’s thorniest questions.
Questions tackled:
How to combat business speak in the workplace?
How do we use new ways of working and psych safety in an arena that relies on older practices as part of its identity?
What are your thoughts on how to divide up total compensation for employees? How much is salary vs health care vs perks?
Is there a size threshold to organizations? What do companies do that have gotten too large and it’s hurting their operations?
What are the trends around new ways of working, and what motivates organizations to engage with The Ready?
How can orgs unlock real collaboration, not just sharing information?
Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for more org design nerdery!
Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].
Mentioned references:
Junior Mints
Jets Pizza
Detroit style pizza
Maslow’s hierarchy
Span of control
"rule of 7"
Dunbar’s number
W.L. Gore
Adaptive strategy
”Hail Mary” pass
”Jamnado”: AWWTR Ep. 7 -
Planning a corporate workshop or off-site often feels like making a burrito. So many options—and so many opinions on what should go in it. A presentation rodeo on the next quarter’s objectives? Absolutely. Time for a key initiative to get the spotlight in front of the C-suite? Yes, please. Extra scoops of mandatory team-building to strengthen your culture? Why not. Everyone likes fun, right?
But when it’s time to actually chow down, it quickly becomes clear you’re dealing with an overstuffed, leaky, $20,000 mess. And everything the workshop was supposed to accomplish? Yeah, that didn’t happen—so you’re back at square one come Monday.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore why our workshop eyes are often bigger than our workshop stomachs; standard off-site practices we need to offload; and how to design new experiences that are actually meaningful and productive.
Interested in hearing more about the sunshine, twilight, and midnight zones? We’ve got stuff coming soon! Sign up here to get first access.
Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for more org design nerdery!
Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].
Mentioned references:
spinning top game "Skittles"
"meetings episode": AWWTR Ep. 12
"strategy stack": AWWTR Ep. 2
"even/overs": BNW Ep. 44
"essential intent": BNW Ep. 90 with Greg McKeown
working agreements: BNW Ep. 103
Topgolf
Liberating Structures
Ball Point game
Brainflakes -
It’s an unspoken truth in most knowledge work that summer is a wasted season. From late May to early September, many teams face reduced numbers and it’s nearly impossible to spin up anything new. The director you need approval from? On a cruise. The graphic designer you need for that new marketing campaign? Camping with the kids. When people just aren’t around, it can sometimes be easier to keep the lights on during the vacation relay race and run out the clock until fall.
The two most common sense solutions: take vacation yourself or focus on different things when people are away. But actually doing either of those things? Way harder than you’d expect, especially when modern work is tuned to overwhelm mode 24/7/365.
In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin talk about why summer is where organizational progress goes to die, and how we can stop spending those months doing business as usual and instead live a hot employee summer.
Interested in hearing more about the sunshine, twilight, and midnight zones? We’ve got stuff coming soon! Sign up here to get first access.
Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for more org design nerdery!
Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].
Mentioned references:
"Vacation OS episode": BNW Ep. 142
"async episode": AWWTR Ep. 7
"medieval peasant vacation time": all articles point back to Juliet B. Schor's 1993 "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure"
"workshop episode": will be released Monday, July 22nd!
"work as a paycheck discussion": AWWTR Ep. 11 -
The world is changing faster than ever. But leadership teams seem a little… stagnant. Sure, there’s plenty of changeover as one CEO is replaced by another, or as new C-suite roles pop up, but the way leadership teams operate is largely unchanged from the 1950s. That model? It’s antithetical to the change that’s needed for the rest of an organization to become more adaptable and resilient.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore the ways in which leadership teams are holding their organizations back from the future. They’ll dig into how leaders can shift from defense to offense, set the right expectations for their teams, and recognize what their “real work” actually is.
Interested in hearing more about the sunshine, twilight, and midnight zones? We’ve got stuff coming soon! Sign up here to get first access.
Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for more org design nerdery!
Got an idea for future episodes or a thorny workplace question you need answered? Shoot us a message to [email protected].
Mentioned references:
"totchos"
management science
servant leadership
The Ready's OS Canvas
Functional Analytic Psychotherapy Made Simple, by Gareth Holman
Gareth's podcast episode: BNW Ep. 5 with Gareth Holman
"Closing Time" by Semisonic
Mural -
It seems everybody’s up in arms about meetings these days. “There’s too many! They ones we have suck! We have meetings to prepare for other meetings! They keep me from doing my actual job!” We get it, and we hear you. In fact, between BNW and our current show, we’ve devoted 9 episodes to meetings! What more could there be to say in a tenth?
Turns out, a ton. There’s so much intertwined with modern meeting culture that we’re often doomed to failure before we even get in the room. From the trap of the status meeting to leaders hogging all the stage time, Rodney and Sam dissect where most meetings go wrong and give you the tools to rewrite the script for how to start holding meetings that matter.
If you’re looking to make your next meeting better, make it a huddle! Learn more about how huddles can bring side-by-side collaboration and creativity to your remote teams at Slack.com.
Interested in hearing more about the sunshine zone and the twilight zone? We’ve got stuff coming soon! Sign up here to get first access.
Prefer to watch rather than listen? Check out the extended live cut over on Youtube.
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try? Sign up for our newsletter.
Follow us on your favorite platforms for more org design nerdery!
LinkedIn
Instagram
Youtube
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Mentioned references
1:1 meetings: BNW Ep. 19 with Michael Bungay Stanier; AWWTR Ep. 4
retrospective meetings: BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney
OS Coffee meetings: BNW Ep. 144
an operating rhythm of meetings: BNW Ep. 118
action meetings: BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin
"RACI episode": AWWTR Ep. 10 -
In the nearly five years since launching this podcast, our inbox has received one type of question more than any other: “If I’m trying to change a system that just doesn’t want to change, how do I keep going? When should I admit defeat and leave?” As people who function as “professional resistance” in organizations all over the world, this questions always hits us hard—because change itself is hard and often can lead to burnout.
So we’re finally having this conversation out in the open to tackle why the people who care the most are the ones who leave. Rodney and Sam dig into why burnout is so common among change agents, how to identify signs of meaningful progress, and when individuals and leaders should see the writing on the wall and throw in the towel.
Oh, and we're on Instagram now! Check us out there for fun behind the scenes stuff and extra things you won't find anywhere else.
To see the video version of this episode, head on over to Youtube.
Mentioned references:
"orthogonal"
"wasta"
"emotional labor of change": AWWTR Ep. 6
"Sisyphean"
"the maze and the mouse"
"see through The Matrix"
Mission-Based Team: FoHR Ep. 1
"the yips"
Rick Rubin
EMDR Therapy
Basecamp scandal: BNW Ep. 71
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try? Sign up for our newsletter.
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
The RACI matrix (as well its cousins DACI, DARCI, etc.) aims to neatly categorize stakeholders into roles—who’s responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for every decision your team makes. We spend a lot of time filling out those RACI boxes, because it’s supposed to give us order and predictability—a single source of truth for all future choices.
We’re all about achieving real clarity, but we often see RACIs treated as a one-and-done exercise, rather than something that evolves with a team. People end up in the “R” or “A” space without having the actual authority to execute a role, and then we make those roles the fall guy for a system never set up for them to succeed.
In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore the good intentions that lead us to make RACIs in the first place, where they fall flat, and why decision making is always more complicated than what can be captured on a chart.
Interested in learning more about The Ready’s ocean metaphor? Sign up here to find out when it’s time to dive in.
Mentioned references:
Responsibility assignment matrixes (such as RACI, DACI, and DARCI)
DARE model
MacGuffin
DRI (Directly Responsible Individual)
SPOA (Single Point of Accountability)
"traditional consulting ep": AWWTR Ep. 8
"future tension": BNW Ep. 16 with Thomas Thomison
"scenario planning": BNW Ep. 34 with Kevin Kelly
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter.
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
“Ask Us Anything” episodes were a Brave New Work tradition, and we knew they were going to live on in this next new chapter of the show. What we didn’t know was how much harder the questions would be this time around! Turns out, after nearly 200 shows our audience is pretty sharp and asking some very specific questions.
On today’s episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin look at what arrived in our inbox and tackle our listeners thorniest questions…and even tease a little something coming on the horizon.
Sign up to become the first to hear when the thing Rodney teased in this episode is live!
Check out the extended live video version of this episode on our Youtube channel or shoot us a message if you'd like a transcript.
Questions answered in this episode:
How do you give critical feedback without being seen as a threat?
Any thoughts on orgs moving to eliminate excessive layers of management?
What's a workplace project you thought would be easy but turned out to be hard, and vice versa?
What's a starting point for orgs that want to work with someone like The Ready?
Can you have an episode about the disconnect between senior leadership and where the work happens?
Mentioned references:
"high and low umbrella"
"org debt"
"how might we?"
Chesterton's Fence
Bayer's elimination of managers
Humanocracy: BNW Ep. 47 with Michele Zanini
Haier's elimination of managers
The Ready's OS Canvas
Liberating Structures: BNW Ep. 49 with Keith McCandless
"anti-pattern"
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
For decades, traditional consulting (think “management” or “strategy” varieties now synonymous with the Big Three) has been a go-to move for organizations looking for a shake up. Need a bulletproof vision for the future or a new org restructuring that’ll win over the C-suite and shareholders? You can’t beat their analytical prowess, strategy design, and slick presentation.
But too often clients wind up stuck with expensive change plans they can’t execute on their own. Without real coaching, structure, and experienced guidance, these efforts stand a high chance of fizzling out and collecting dust on a shelf. Facing that reality time and time again lead The Ready to study and understand how organizations actually work and evolve. Yes, we’re also consultants—but the processes, outcomes, and experiences we create differ greatly. And that can lead to a whole bunch of confusion.
In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin delve into the stark differences between traditional consulting and how future-of-work firms like The Ready operate. Because not all consulting is created equal.
Prefer to watch instead of listen? Check out the extended video cut of this episode, with even more Rodney and Sam moments, on our Youtube channel.
Mentioned references:
VUCA
"participatory change": BNW Ep. 43
"cross-functional teaming": Future of HR Ep. 1
"strategy pancakes episode": AWWTR Ep. 2
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
For decades, face-to-face working has been the default way of working. Launching a new project; untangling an OS problem; updating a team on progress made in the last week—our classic go-to for all those different kinds of work is blocking off time on a calendar. When in doubt, just corral everybody into a room, real or virtual.
But this “one-size-fits-all” approach is coming up short as work evolves. And while almost everyone dreads having a meeting-stuffed calendar, ideas for what to try instead can be in short supply. Plus, when 85% of leaders find it hard to trust that their employees are being productive, async work can look like a risky free-for-all.
In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore how our attachment to synchronous work is hampering performance and why asynchronous work is a mindset, not a tool stack.
Looking for other ways to asynchronously enjoy this episode? Check out our Youtube channel for the live video version, or email [email protected] to get a transcript for reading.
Mentioned references:
Loom
Rodney's article on org debt: How to Tackle the Biggest Threat to Your Team's Growth
Red, amber, green (RAG status)
Tanisi's podcast episode: BNW Ep. 88 with Tanisi Pooran
Miro
Pitch
Pomodoro method
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
Every time something changes at work, someone’s bound to be upset. Digital transformations take resources from analog teams; restructuring a department can take authority from one group and give it to another; removing a step from a workflow can eliminate a role altogether. Any change, including those meant to make things better, will create winners and losers and that’s bound to kick up a hornet’s nest of feelings.
Here’s the puzzling part: Despite years of research showing us that surfacing and processing these feelings is key to unlocking a company’s ability to be adapt, many workplaces often treat emotions as taboo. They’re messy, unpredictable, and nobody wants to touch them—even when ignoring them does more harm that good. Playing pretend isn't getting us anywhere.
In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore why we have negative feelings about big feelings and how it’s holding our organizations back from evolving into the places they could be.
We're on Youtube! An extended video version of this episode (with extra Rodney and Sam moments) is available to watch there.
Mentioned references:
Tabea's Meet The Ready post
"unconsciously protecting the status quo": Immunity to Change, 2009 book by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
"protection state": On Point of Relationship podcast episode with Frederic Laloux
"complicated vs complex": Brave New Work keynote
The unpaid emotional labor expected of women at work, 2024 BBC article
What Rodney said at SXSW last year: BNW 162: Live from SXSW with Brian Elliott
Love the show? Leave us a review and share this episode with your coworkers!
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]. -
Ask anyone about organizational silos and they’re bound to tell you they’re bad. When we run Tension and Practice exercises with clients, “We work in silos” often shows up as Tension No. 1 holding a team back. Yet like a moth to a flame, we keep gravitating toward them, building walls that are higher and more insurmountable than ever before. What gives?
In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dive into the bottomless ball pit that is organizational silos, exploring why we think they’ll solve all our problems, how they’re actually sabotaging organizations from being effective, and why trying to build bridges between them (rather than designing something new from the ground up) is one of the worst things we can do.
Mentioned references:
"Ready for Anything structure episode": BNW Ep. 23
"Hollywood Model episode": FoHR Miniseries, Ep. 1
The Ready's Tension & Practice Cards
"the previous episode": AWWTR Ep. 4
value stream mapping
Spotify chapters and guilds video Sam promised
"IDM consent-based governance": BNW Ep. 43
"movies and studios"
"retro": BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
You can’t throw a stone on LinkedIn without hitting at least one post about return-to-office policies. From CEOs to employees, from thought leaders to maybe even your mayor, everyone is taking a side, doubling down, and yelling into the void as loud as they can. Where people work is being treated as the most important issue—the existential sea change that will either make or break a company.
In reality, the RTO debate is the superficial fight we have instead of addressing the deeper, tougher, and way more complex issues that really matter (think questions around purpose, trust, "productivity", and communication). And here’s a fun fact: You can’t work well anywhere (in person or remotely) if confusion and misalignment is swirling around your company.
In this week’s episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin unpack why we’re still debating where people work, what that obsession costs our organizations, and how to start breaking free of the cycle.
Mentioned references:
BNW’s first RTO/hybrid work episode: Ep. 79
Erin Grau’s Fortune article “Flexible work is feminist”
"Theory Y"
Brian Elliott's previous appearances on our show: BNW Ep. 129, BNW Ep. 162, and FoHR Miniseries Ep. 9
"Return-to-Office Mandates" from Mark Ma and Yuye Ding of the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business
"Lessons Learned: 1,000 Days of Distributed at Atlassian"
"Basecamp": BNW Ep. 4 with Dan Kim
Mural
Miro
Children of Time
Previous episodes about retreats and in-person gatherings: BNW Ep. 64, BNW Ep. 82 with Lindsay Caplan, and BNW Ep. 94
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]. -
1:1s (or one-on-ones) are a ubiquitous part of our daily working lives. These two-person meetings (a manager + a direct report = a classic 1:1) are meant to be a space for diving into individual challenges, fostering trust, building stronger relationships, and providing a forum for feedback and recognition. When designed with intention, they can be great.
But at some point, 1:1s jumped the shark. Today, we see more and more companies with an overwhelming “1:1 culture,” where calendars are packed with a million two-person meetings (on top of lots of other meetings), leaving precious little time to get work done. Worse still, most 1:1s include our worst meeting habits: over-indexing on status updates, information hoarding, and bureaucratic theater. What gives?
In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin meet one-on-one (see what we did there?) to explore why 1:1 cultures take hold in organizations, the cost that comes with doing them poorly, how to rely on them less, and how to start making the ones you do keep count.
Mentioned references:
“Tear and share roll”
“op rhythm”: BNW Ep. 118
A Beautiful Mind, movie from 2001
“default stack of pancakes” : At Work With The Ready Ep. 2
“Action Meeting”: BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin
“retrospectives”: BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney
“Donut meetings”
“Ali’s 1:1 article”
“Lean coffee/OS Coffee”: BNW Ep. 144
We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air.
Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com
Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter.
We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. - Visa fler
