Podcast
At Work with The Ready
Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin have helped teams around the world adopt more modern ways of working and on At Work with The Ready they’re sharing the inside scoop with you, too. Whether you’re struggling with a carousel of ineffective meetings, annual strategy sessions that go nowhere, or decision-making churn that never ceases, they’ve seen it all and are here to help. In each episode, they'll break down common workplace challenges and show you the moves—both big and small—to start making real, lasting change. (Formerly “Brave New Work” with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans)
- Management chart
- #57
- Episodes
- 294
- Releases
- Every two weeks
- Typical length
- 51 min
- On air since
- 2019
- Latest episode
- 1 day ago
Episodes
294 episodes, newest first
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52 min
[Rebroadcast] Forget ROI: The Ethical Case for Org Design
Season 9, Episode 42
Show notes
Rebroadcast note: We're continuing to revisit Rodney and Sam's favorite episodes of their time together, and this one was a universal favorite.
Most org design conversations get forced through a narrow funnel: prove the ROI, justify the spend, make the numbers work. But if work is something most people can’t opt out of—and where we spend a huge chunk of our attention and waking lives—then “it pays off” feels like a painfully small standard.
This week, Rodney and Sam explore the ethical case for organizational design. They move beyond spreadsheets and profit metrics to ask bigger questions about leadership, power, transparency, compensation, and the human impact of broken systems. What do organizations owe the people who work inside them? Is better workplace design a moral responsibility — not just a financial strategy?
Get the full transcript and all the links mentioned in this episode over on our website: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr44-the-ethical-case-for-good-organizational-design
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00:00 Check-In: What’s your energy like right now? 04:04 Why “good work” shouldn’t be judged by ROI 08:16 Why a “good” work experience is the exception, not the rule 10:06 Why protecting yourself isn’t “selling out” 15:41 How to spend your attention on what’s actually worthy 21:35 Why the power gap between leadership and workers is broken 27:31 Why ethically designed companies are rarely publicly traded 31:07 The principles and values behind ethical orgs 40:35 Why joy at work shouldn’t be nickeled and dimed 44:35 Idea 1: Don’t accept performative change initiatives 47:17 Idea 2: Audit your existing principles and values 48:35 Idea 3: Don’t let leadership gaslight you into conforming 50:33 Wrap up: Leave us a review and share the show with a friend
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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50 min
[Rebroadcast] RACI is The Wrong Answer To The Right Question
Show notes
Editor's note: While we're on hiatus we're revisiting some of Rodney and Sam's favorite episodes of the show, starting with this one about RACIs, and how other accountability matrices promise certainty they can never deliver and other ways to start thinking about accountability at work.
Get all the links mentioned in this episode, and the full transcript here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr10-why-raci-doesnt-fix-decision-making-and-what-does?
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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29 min
58. The One Where Sam Says Goodbye
Season 9, Episode 40
Show notes
We've spent the last few months talking about organizations that are built to benefit from change. But change gets extra hard when people leave, especially when that person is your friend and a big part of what makes a job worth getting up for in the morning. It’s hard to balance being happy for someone moving on to their shiny new thing and still grieve the hole they leave behind. Well, the same goes for podcasts and we're a bit in our feels today: after three years behind the mic, Sam has decided it's time to move on to new adventures.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam throw a mini celebration for Sam's last episode as co-host: why now's the time, how the world of work has shifted during his run, a look back at a few of their favorite episodes, and what’s coming next for the show in 2027.
Get all the links mentioned in this episode, and the full transcript here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr-58-sam-spurlin-final-episode
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00:00 Intro + Check-In 04:08 Why now's the right moment for Sam to leave 08:55 Rodney and Sam's highlights from their years together 13:30 Rodney and Sam's all-time favorite episodes 17:28 Sam's parting thoughts and appreciation 20:30 How to stay in touch with Sam 22:52 Blooper reel
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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9 min
AUA: How to Get Institutional Knowledge Out of People’s Heads Bonus
Season 9, Episode 39
Show notes
In some organizations, the knowledge isn't in a wiki or a handbook…it’s trapped in people's heads and travels by hallway storytelling. A listener wants to know: how do you build a culture of knowledge sharing and async communication in a place where writing things down has never been the norm?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam dig into why the oral tradition persists. From the power dynamics of hoarding knowledge to the fear of having receipts for decisions that went sideways, they share examples of how to lower the cost of sharing until working in the open becomes the path of least resistance.
Get the links mentioned in this episode and a full transcript here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/aua-how-to-get-institutional-knowledge-out-of-peoples-heads
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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59 min
57. Your Company Wasn't Built to Grieve with Molly Graham
Season 9, Episode 38
Show notes
Organizations are absorbing more change than they were ever built for, and that change always comes with a lot of feelings. Whether it's a layoff, a reorg, a promotion, or handing off a project you built, we're constantly having to shed hopes and dreams and stability and start over. But most companies are built to avoid those feelings, not process them, so they just accumulate. Leaders skip straight to the "let's get excited about the future!" phase, everyone's feelings go underground, and teams get trapped in a game of pretend that grinds work to a halt.
In this episode, Rodney sits down with Molly Graham, founder of Glue Club and host of TED's WorkLife, to crack open the chestnut of identity, change, and grief at work. They explore the consequences that come with fusing who we are with what we do, the unintentional harm caused by leaders who pretend everything's fine when it's not, and why every big change needs a "funeral" before everyone can finally move forward.
Get all of Molly's links, references mentioned in this episode, and the full transcript here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr57-grief-identity-and-change-at-work-with-molly-graham
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00:00 Intro + Check-In: What's a risk you took everyone thought was a bad idea? 04:08 How to handle the pressure of a big new Lego 08:40 How your identity gets fused with your job 12:24 How identity shifts across career phases 15:18 How capitalism fuses your work and your life 20:00 The fear-driven meta-narrative around AI 23:17 How we should actually be talking about AI at work 33:06 Why we're so bad at handling feelings and grief at work 40:47 Moving leaders from "shit umbrella" to "shit filter" 44:16 Why grief doesn't care about your deadlines 47:47 What responsibility do companies have for worker wellbeing? 52:05 Why the worker-employer contract is breaking
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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14 min
AUA: How To Make the Hard Call and Shut Something Down Bonus
Season 9, Episode 37
Show notes
Every organization is postponing something painful they don’t want to face. The CEO’s strategy that’s stopped working, the layoffs that have become unavoidable, the promising prototype that’s not delivering results. But even when what has to be done is clear, nobody wants to be the one to be the one to do it.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener asking about how companies can get better at ripping off the Bandaid. They explore ways to put a clock on hard decisions, shrinking the impact of the rip, and share an example of how The Ready has approached their own hard choices.
Get the full transcript and resources mentioned in this episode here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/aua-how-to-make-the-hard-call-and-shut-something-down
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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55 min
56. Your Strategy is a Work of Fiction
Season 9, Episode 36
Show notes
Once a year a small group goes offsite, argues for three days, and comes back with a deck. Goals get written. Functions map their OKRs to the slides. Then the market moves, and everybody spends the next eleven months executing against assumptions that stopped being true in February. Most people in the building read that document and can't find themselves anywhere in it, which is how a strategy quietly becomes a story about a company nobody actually works at.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Rothkopf close out the “Built to Benefit From Change” arc with the piece that underpins everything. They make the case that strategy is what you're executing right now, sort out what belongs at each altitude of the organization, and walk through the four meetings that keep a strategy alive after the offsite ends.
Get the full transcript and resources mentioned in this episode here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr56-your-strategy-is-a-work-of-fiction
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00:00 Intro + Check-In: What's your favorite work of fiction? 04:38 Why strategy is cooking, not the recipe 10:08 Why strategy should read like nonfiction, not fiction 11:51 How much of your strategy should different levels understand? 16:38 Why strategy describes now, not a future plan 18:38 Where vision belongs if not in your strategy 22:23 Why strategy should keep changing, not stay stagnant 25:22 What's essential for a good strategy 32:37 The hard trade-offs hiding in your strategy 39:20 Why the strategy document should take 5% of your time 41:37 Strategy rhythm essential: Retrospectives 44:44 Strategy rhythm essential: Resource allocation meetings 48:05 Strategy rhythm essential: Prioritization meetings 50:06 Strategy rhythm essential: Decision meetings 52:01 Why new strategy execution takes time to pay off
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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8 min
AUA: How Do Leaders Stop Being The Decision Bottleneck? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 35
Show notes
It happens gradually: a leader makes one call that should have been decided by one of their reports, then another, until the whole team has quietly stopped deciding anything without “checking in” first. By the time the bottleneck is discovered, it feels like just how things are now and any change feels uncomfortable for everyone.
In this week’s AUA, Rodney and Sam answer a listener’s question about how to catch yourself before you become that bottleneck, navigating the discomfort when handing decision rights back to where they belong, and the “freedom and consequences” philosophy behind delegating tough choices.
Get the full transcript and resources mentioned in this episode here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/aua-how-leaders-stop-being-the-decision-bottleneck
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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55 min
55. Your Org Can Be Built to Benefit From Change. Can You?
Season 9, Episode 34
Show notes
Most of us were told to find the one thing we're great at and ride it. Build the team around your gaps, get good at your specialty and let someone else cover the rest. That advice built a lot of careers, and it also built a lot of leaders who only have one move, right at the moment when the ground under their organization keeps shifting.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and guest co-host Sam Rothkopf get into what leadership looks like inside an organization built to benefit from change. They cover why stewards have to keep firsthand contact with the market, the balance between connection and courage that every working relationship depends on, and one of the deepest truths in all of change work: you can’t change a system without changing yourself along with it.
Get the full transcript and resources mentioned in this episode here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr55-leadership-built-to-benefit-from-change
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00:00 Intro + Check-In: Who is an inspirational leadership example for you?
04:20 What kind of leadership does an organization built to benefit from change need?
05:44 Why you can't outsource contact with your own market
09:30 The higher you rise, the less you resemble your customer
14:08 Find the spark, then test it: how to research without boiling the ocean
16:12 Curiosity requires leaving your ego at home
20:41 Work is existential for your employees. It isn't for you
25:47 Should you double down on your strengths or become a generalist?
31:49 The shrinking half-life of your experience
34:35 You can't hide from the work
41:56 When you're a hammer, everything looks like decision rights
44:51 Connection or courage: which one do you drop?
52:06 Nobody gets to be one thing anymore
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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9 min
AUA: Why Does Every Decision Take Forever? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 33
Show notes
Most organizations run on two default modes of deciding: build consensus until everyone's exhausted, or debate until the boss makes the call. Both feel normal and both quietly stall the work, so how do you introduce something better without triggering resistance?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam trade their favorite on-ramps. Rodney starts small: be the person who asks "wait, have we actually decided?" Sam makes the case for a bigger palette of decision types, from the advice process to IDM-lite. And both land hard on the power of the proposal, even a scrappy single paragraph beats another meeting of casting about, and bringing two counter-proposals takes your ego out of the game entirely.
Get the full transcript and resources mentioned in this episode here: https://www.theready.com/podcast/episodes/aua-decision-making-takes-forever
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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50 min
54. Change Only Sticks If It Starts At The Top: Resetting Your Executive Team
Season 9, Episode 32
Show notes
Hard truth time: your executive team sets the ceiling on how fast everything below it can move and most of them aren't built for that job. Decisions pile up on the CEO's desk because nobody's clear who owns them. Board prep swallows whole weeks. One person quietly absorbs all the coordination nobody designed for. Then a real change arrives, and the team soft-pedals it out through their functions until eight executives are telling eight different stories and nothing’s getting done.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and guest co-host Sam Rothkopf explore the merits of running an ELT Reset to get a leadership team clear on what it owns and how it runs. They unpack the problems that show up on nearly every executive team, the value of leaving your functional hat at the door, and the non-negotiables of any successful C-suite.
Get the full transcript and resources mentioned in this episode here: https://theready.com/podcast/episodes/awwtr-54-resetting-your-executive-leadership-team
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00:00 Check-in: the first time you were in charge
04:40 Why even reset your leadership team
07:09 Switching hats to think like a “first team”
10:07 The chartering conversation everyone skips
11:53 Three problems of every leadership team
15:13 Being clear about what hear you’re wearing
18:55 Red flag: one person holds all the decisions
19:44 The backstop and blame game behind dysfunctional ELTs
22:15 Founder-led resets vs. professional CEO resets
27:07 Building an adaptive op rhythm for your ELT
30:43 Who belongs on an executive leadership team
35:52 The two polarities every ELT swings between
39:09 Learning from Sam’s C-suite experience
42:04 Knowing the signs when it’s time to reset
45:41 Your ELT is essential to investigate and decide
45:40 Investigate, decide, move
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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11 min
AUA: Are Ego-Driven Leaders The Only Kind That Succeed? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 31
Show notes
Sam Altman and Elon Musk built some of the most valuable companies on the planet while doing nearly everything we would advise against. So a listener wants to know: if ego and raw self-belief keep landing people at the top, is all this talk of trust and participation on our show worth it?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam get honest about survivorship bias, why colorful founders get all the ink while quietly thriving companies get none, and how the frontier game selects for a very particular kind of human. They also make the case for a bigger definition of success, one that counts the experience of the people doing the work right alongside the profit.
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• InstagramMentioned references:
• Sam Altman article
• survivorship biasSound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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51 min
53. The Chief of Staff’s Real Job: Turning Strategy Into Action
Season 9, Episode 30
Show notes
If you hired a chief of staff to be your leadership team’s star athlete, don’t let them languish on the bench. At many organizations, chiefs of staff are meant to execute high-wire strategic work. But the job is often reduced to: glorified project management, executive cat-herding, and catering to the CEO’s whims. They compensate for bad work design through effort and influence, carrying big expectations with no real authority.
In this episode, Rodney and guest co-host, Sam Rothkopf, lay out the first move toward becoming an organization built to benefit from change: Recharter your chief of staff as the leadership team's work designer. They dig into the three jobs most chiefs of staff currently hold; why the role should serve teams, not single leaders; and the authority they need to put business strategy into motion and free up executives to do the work only they can do.
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Mentioned references:
• Miraval Rosé
• Casamigos
• "built to benefit from change ep": AWWTR Ep. 52
• "failure of the ways of working ep": AWWTR Ep. 50
• Mia Wise00:00 Intro + Check-In: Favorite Celebrity Endorsed Product 03:13 The chief of staff already exists, but does the wrong work 06:49 The chief of staff today: admin, project manager, influencer 11:02 Why chiefs of staff are prone to burnout 16:46 Chiefs of staff are everywhere in tech orgs, with no power 22:26 The reframe: serving the team, not the leader 25:44 Building your “shelves” 28:57 Operationalizing strategy, for real 32:47 Playing “favorites’ around who is leading the strategy 37:21 The CEO's first hire 42:07 The authority the role actually needs 46:07 Tooling, comms, and where the team does its work 49:17 Wrap: more moves next week
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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9 min
AUA: When Do Well-Meaning Checklists Turn Into Compliance Theater? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 29
Show notes
Every org has process that started as protection and calcified into performance: boxes we check to prove nothing bad happened, rather than to help good work happen.
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener trying to resist the "checklistification" of their org. They draw a line where good checklists turn bad and explore the limits for what checklists can—and can't—solve in your team's Twilight Zone.
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• "Sunshine and Twilight Zones": The Ready's Depthfinding
• Atul Hawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto
• complicated vs complex
• MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Completely Exhaustive)Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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51 min
52. Welcome to the Liminal Space (Buckle Up!)
Season 9, Episode 28
Show notes
Volatility is just the new normal, and it's crushed everyone's appetite for complexity at the exact moment complexity demands attention. Executives who used to love a whiteboard now say "just tell me the answer." Five-year plans read as fiction within months. Employees trust leadership less than ever and with AI in the mix the old moats (talent, pricing, product, position) are eroding or gone.
So what's left? In this episode, Rodney sits down with Sam Rothkopf, co-steward of The Ready, to lay out the firm's new thesis: durable competitive advantage is the ability to execute in complexity, and the organizations that win will be the ones built to benefit from change. They get into why discernment beats endless experimentation, why execution is strategy now, and what it looks like when a company gets it right.
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Mentioned references:
• Sam Rothkopf
• "stewardship": Miniseries episode
• Jon Roth
• Sky & Depthfinding
• IKEA's AI and virtual design transformation
• "Transfo A and Transfo B": AWWTR Ep. 43
• "Action Meetings": BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin00:00 Intro and Check-In: what have you completely changed your mind about? 05:09 The moment: volatility has killed our appetite for complexity 06:39 "Just tell me the answer" 09:30 AI speeds you up, but doesn’t change your direction 12:54 The old playbooks are defunct and leadership trust is at an all time low 17:41 Built to benefit from change is the future 21:42 Experimenting that leads to new outcomes 23:48 Finding your business’ spark 27:16 Example: IKEA finding their spark 30:44 Finding your spark doesn’t have to be a journey 37:04 Where The Ready’s thinking has evolved 38:00 What "execution is strategy" actually means 42:00 Treat volatility as a resource + the transfo A/B conversation 43:34 Sam’s disposition towards change and volatility 47:16 The inner work: creativity needs a grounded self 48:00 Wrap up—Leave us a review
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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8 min
AUA: How Do You Tell Leadership The Truth Without Getting Fired? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 27
Show notes
You can see it clearly: the project is FUBAR, the reporting is rosy, and the people with the power to do something about it are several levels above you. But sending a flare up the chain feels risky—especially when your boss's boss's boss is the one you need to reach. So what do you actually do?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener stuck in that exact spot and offer a few moves that don't involve career-ending emails or anonymous screeds nailed to the CEO's door, and explore whether you can quietly reshape the data story being told upstream in a way that's helpful rather than accusatory.
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53 min
51. It's Time, Babe: How to Know When to Leave Your Job
Season 9, Episode 26
Show notes
Everyone tells you leaving a job is a math problem: runway, comp, the next offer, the spreadsheet that finally tips. But most people who ask "how do I know when it's time?" have already answered the question. They just haven't let themselves hear it yet.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam get personal, both are in the middle of their own transitions, and unpack what it actually takes to leave well. They dig into the difference between the best days, the worst days, and the average day that actually tells you the truth; why your body tends to figure it out long before your brain does; and why leaving of your own volition is often better for your mental health than running out the clock.
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Mentioned references:
• Sky and Midnight Zones
• "layoffs episode": BNW Ep. 152
• EOT (Employee-Owned Trust)
• "ways of working episode": AWWTR Ep. 50
• Dual Transformation: AWWTR Ep. 43
• "Gareth": BNW Ep. 5 with Dr. Gareth Holman
• FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early)
• "10% of Americans don't have enough food"Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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9 min
AUA: How Do You Make Employee Ownership Actually Feel Real? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 25
Show notes
Plenty of companies make the move to employee ownership—ESOPs, EOTs, buyouts—and then wonder why nothing really changes. The shares transfer, the announcement goes out, and then... people still feel like employees. The ownership is technically there, but the culture hasn't caught up.
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener who's seen this gap firsthand and wants to know which parts of the operating system to examine first. Drawing heavily from The Ready's own experience as an EOT, Rodney and Sam make the case that ownership culture lives in three places most companies underinvest in and why checks and balances between long-term purpose and short-term operations are the structural move that makes distributed power meaningful.
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Mentioned references:
• ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan)
• EOT (Employee Owned Trust)
• The Ready's EOT transition
• The Ready's OS CanvasSound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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51 min
50. The Ways of Working Movement Failed. Now What?
Season 9, Episode 24
Show notes
Fifteen years ago, the future of work seemed inevitable: bureaucracy was crumbling, adaptive organizations were the next default, and a whole movement of practitioners was going to get us there. That future never arrived. Agile transformation offices are being eliminated, the pendulum has swung hard back to command-and-control, and the companies we held up as proof are still the exceptions, not the rule.
This week, Rodney and Sam take an honest look at the failure of the ways of working movement, including their own part in it. They dig into the mismatches that doomed so much of this work and get practical about what still works—because while the movement may have stalled, the moves still matter.
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Mentioned references:
• Bradlees
• Twilight and Sunshine Zone
• Buurtzorg
• Morning Star: BNW Ep. 54 with Doug Kirkpatrick
• Haier
• "Bayer under Bill": BNW Ep. 68 with Bill Anderson
• Mary Parker Follett
• org debt: FOHR Miniseries
• action meeting: BNW Ep. 80
• strategy stack: AWWTR EP. 2
• op rhythm: BNW Ep. 11800:00 Intro + Check-in: Your first music purchase with your own money? 05:18 The failure of the new ways of working movement 07:54 What we mean by "failure" 11:08 ZIRP, COVID, and the swing back to command-and-control 15:27 What people will buy isn’t actually what they need 17:30 Selling Sunshine Zone products for Twilight Zone work 20:12 Bottoms-up to a fault 25:01 Nobody has capacity to learn anymore 28:11 Tennis vs. golf: the new consulting posture 35:23 Is local change worth it? 38:42 Failure of the movement, not the moves 40:34 Change #1 - Go deeper 42:49 Change #2 - Orient to the outcome 44:47 Change #3 - Branching roadmaps and scenario planning 46:15 Change #4 - Build organizations that benefit from change 49:15 The End
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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7 min
AUA: Is Real Change Possible Inside Federal Bureaucracy? Bonus
Season 9, Episode 23
Show notes
Most of the conversation about the future of work is aimed squarely at the corporate sector—growth engines, dual transformation, quarterly targets. But what if your organization exists to regulate, administer, and serve the public? What if the purpose isn't changing, and innovation of the underlying mission isn't really on the table?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to an internal consultant at a large federal agency who's wondering how much of the podcast's advice actually translates to their world. The answer: more than you'd think.
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Mentioned references:
• The Ready's OS Canvas
• "Dual Transformation episode": AWWTR Ep. 43
• "org debt"
• "user centered design": AWWTR Ep 42, Skill 2Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.
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