Episodi
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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.)
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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.
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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 -
Episodi mancanti?
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].
Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com. -
It's January! New beginnings? Ambitious plans? Giant commitments to change? They’re on everyone’s mind. Companies included—since now’s the time when glossy PowerPoint decks are so eagerly rolled out. And those PowerPoints? They’re always brimming with promise for the year ahead.
But there's a glaring disconnect between those slides (all 73 of them) and eventual success we often don’t address. Because how frequently do those meticulously crafted plans pan out? Does the new agenda account for the day-to-day running of the company? Is the plan flexible enough to handle economic curveballs? (We remember 2020, right?)
The reality is that “traditional strategy” often resembles New Year's resolutions; they’re imbued with good intentions but ultimately destined for disappointment.
In this episode of "At Work with The Ready," (new year, new podcast name!) co-hosts Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore our deep-rooted conditioning toward conventional planning methods (despite their shortcomings), share what a more complexity conscious approach to strategy looks like, and give you moves to start busting up the annual cycles of frustration, stagnancy, and finger-pointing.
Mentioned references:
"Getting Things Done and David Allen": Brave New Work Ep. 39 with David Allen
"90% of leaders admit strategies fail based on implementation": Closing The Gap: Designing and Delivering a Strategy That Works - The Economist's Intelligence Unit
Essential Intent
Japanese pancakes, straight from Sam's Instagram algorithm
Even/overs: Brave New Work Ep. 44
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
Looping
Red Teaming
"Scenario planning": Brave New Work Ep. 34 with Kevin Kelly
Adjacent possible
Op rhythm
"mango sorbet": Brave New Work Ep. 163 Check-In Round
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. -
Whether it’s in front of clients or in front of a mic, we talk about change all day long. Having fewer, better meetings; learning to productively disagree; overhauling and evolving the HR function; exploring four-day work weeks—the podcast has covered miles and miles of transformational ground in 4 years.
However we don’t often talk about how we’ve changed. And after six seasons and 162 episodes, how could we not be different? We used the show’s hiatus to reflect on where we’ve been and where we want to go—and we reached some bittersweet conclusions. But if we resisted change and all the learning and joy that can come with it, we wouldn’t be The Ready.
In this very special episode, Aaron Dignan, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin talk about Brave New Work’s origin story, what they’ve learned making all these episodes (it was 162, right?), and what the show’s future may hold. Trust us, you won’t want to miss it.
This episode was recorded with video, so you can see our smiling faces on The Ready’s Youtube channel.
Mentioned references:
Imoyoshi, home of the purple sweet potato soft serve
Ira Glass
The Ready's Spotify Wrapped LinkedIn post
"Pop up and do less" scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Supermanage, from Murmur Labs
The File Drawer
Fields of Work
The Future of HR miniseries
"the Panera days": The Ready's first "office" was in a Panera near Bryant Park in NYC! Hear more about The Ready's early days in BNW Ep. 158.
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In July, we began exploring what HR’s current reality looked like and how People teams could evolve into a better, brighter, more adaptive future. Thirteen episodes, three guest interviews, a record breaking AUA, and lots of unexpected hot dog talk later, we’ve reached the end. And while endings can be bittersweet, this miniseries, proudly co-hosted by two org design nerds, is transforming that feeling into a sweet retrospective.
In today’s final Future of HR episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin look back on the three months they spent in the deep end of the HR pool and talk about they’ve learned, what’s surprised them, and where their opinions have shifted. Plus, we pull out all the stops with one of the funniest check-in rounds of the series and a little something extra at the end as a thank you for tuning in. Buckle up, brave listeners. Because this isn't really an ending; it's a launchpad for all the exciting adventures HR is truly ready for.
Mentioned references:
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 film version)
Kids Incorporated
Kids Incorporated theme song (we listened to it, even though Sam wouldn't)
The Boxcar Children
School of Rock
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Learn more about The Future of HR at our website.
Curious where your company sits on our 5-stage maturity model? Take our assessment and find out!
Have a burning HR question for Rodney and Sam to answer? Email us at [email protected].
Ready to get started moving your HR department into the future? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected].
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00:00 Intro + Check-In: When you were a child, what TV show or movie do you wish you could have been a part of in real life?
05:04 Goals of the FoHR miniseries
12:44 Reception of the miniseries from HR folks
16:51 How Rodney and Sam’s views have changed (or not) since episode 1
25:48 Convictions that are stronger now than when we started
29:52 Final takeaways: If you remember nothing else, remember this one thing
32:38 What’s next on your FoHR journey
34:42 Thank-you
35:31 Blooper + humor reel - Mostra di più
