At Work with The Ready

This is the ninth episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode explores the area of meetings and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries with Aa...

This is the eighth episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode explores the area of workflow and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries with A...

This is the seventh episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode explores the area of innovation and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries wit...

This is the sixth episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode explores the area of resources and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries with A...

This is the fifth episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode explores the area of strategy and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries with Aa...

This is the fourth episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode explores the area of structure and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries with...

This is the third episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode digs deep into the area of authority and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries...

This is the second episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. Today's episode digs deep into the area of purpose and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty. This Brave New Work miniseries w...

This is the first in a series of short episodes devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything. This Brave New Work miniseries with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans is based on The Ready's OS Canvas which is featured in Brave New Wor...

The one-on-one meeting, often between a manager and their "direct report" is among the most common and popular meetings in existence. But it may also be the most harmful. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans debate and discuss the best and worst ways to hold this meeting. Later, they're joined by the author of The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier, to figure out ho...

It's been many years since the release of Frederic Laloux's groundbreaking book Reinventing Organizations. In some ways the world is different—more ready, more radical—and in other ways, not much has changed. More adaptive and soulful ways of working are still fringe. The way forward isn't clear. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak with Frederic about where we st...

Facing a pandemic, many of the world's institutions are finally giving remote work, agility, responsiveness, and basic human decency some deep consideration. Meanwhile, it's becoming clear that organizations who have already been prioritizing adaptivity and humanity at work are surprisingly well prepared to face this challenge. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans explo...

Our job is to keep the organization safe, right? And in order to do that we need to predict the future, see around corners, and avoid unnecessary risk. We need to be able to list all the ways the idea we're considering can go wrong. Or... do we? In this episode, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about a concept The Ready calls "future tension," which is what happens when we let our worries about...

The most common question we hear is, "What can I do if I'm not the one in charge?" So many of us—including leaders and managers—want to eradicate bureaucracy. But, we're not the head honcho. In this episode on Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about the simple moves anyone can make to start moving toward a better way of working. Because we have a lot more authority than we think w...

The Ready has a habit of disrupting the established way of doing things, but we've never really looked at our hiring process... until now. In the last few months, we've radically overhauled the way we making hiring decisions by asking questions like, "Can we design a process that reduces bias and homogeny? Can we design a process that focuses on what we want rather than what we don't?" In this epi...

Are you open to some feedback? Gulp. That one word is enough to send most of us packing. Why? Because we've endured far too many "conversations" that were infrequent, impersonal, critical, and one-sided. But, is it possible to do feedback right? In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about three different waves of feedback at work, and why it's so critical to questio...

Any podcast that promotes busting bureaucracy and hobbling hierarchy is bound to stir up some questions. That's why this week we're going to let our listeners Ask Us Anything. For this episode, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans took to Twitter and the Brave New Work Wednesdays newsletter to find out what you're wondering about. And you came through big time. We plan on doing this every twelve weeks or...

When we decide to start working differently, it often begins with just one or two teams taking the leap. For everyone involved, the first weeks and months are a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Not everyone has the courage to see things through. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about SLAM teams (self-managing, lean, audacious, multidisciplinary), the early days...

We all know that faster learning loops are critical to success in complexity. Yet, we rarely (if ever) take the time to practice one of the most powerful learning moves in the game: the retrospective. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about the power of reflection—for the individual, team, and organization—and why we can't keep charging ahead without looking bac...

When starting something new, most of us tend to research, analyze, plan, and procrastinate. Because we don't want to fail. We don't want to be exposed as imposters. And we don't want to take big risks. But in novel and complex spaces, that strategy doesn't help, it only slows us down without increasing our odds. Instead, we need to start by starting and learn by doing so that our ideas can make co...

Leading a team through change is hard, but leading a team to a place without traditional leadership is far harder. If you ask people to step up... will they do it? And can you really mandate self-management? In this episode of Brave New Work, we talk about what it takes to realize a new way of working within a team or organization, and why that's so hard for—and so dependent on—those of us in char...

A diverse team doing important work is bound to disagree. But they’re also likely to avoid talking about it—because conflict makes many of us deeply uncomfortable. But, what if we simply lack the skills to do it well?  In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about why disagreement is so hard, what healthy disagreement looks and feels like, and why it’s so critical to...

In a complex and dynamic world, sharing information on a "need to know" basis is misguided, because it perpetuates ignorance and bias. No one needs to know everything all the time, but we need the right (and the ability) to find what we need when we need it. And while many teams and organizations are coming around to the principle of transparency, when it comes to sharing more sensitive data—like...

Self-awareness in the workplace is hard to come by—because our egos are so good at “protecting” us from reality. For many of us, our identity is so tied up in who we are at work that deep down we worry, “If not for my title... who am I?” In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about how our egos get the better of us, and why reinventing organizations often means reinv...

In almost every organization we visit, teams aren't just having bad meetings—they're having meetings to prepare for those meetings. The virus is spreading. And so we have to ask: when should we have a meeting? And how can we make them more effective when we do? In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about why meetings are a symptom of other problems in the operating...