At Work with The Ready

Emojis might seem like all fun and games—but they can also speak a thousand words about a company’s culture. If they’re used, how they’re used, who uses them, whose posts always gets peppered with dozens of fire or rocket ship reactions—that’s all pretty juicy (and potentially spicy) information about an organization’s sense of camaraderie, connection, trust, agreements…you name it. In this episod...

There’s a lot of “Looking for a job” energy in the world right now—but interviewing can be a nerve-racking experience. Folks on both sides of the equation want something—reliable gig, reliable colleague—and that can give way to performativity, misrepresentation, and hidden agendas. Because when an interview process doesn’t incentivize authenticity, negative patterns can pop off real quick. In this...

Work in 2022 felt…a little messy. Or a lot messy: Back-to-office ultimatums; wages not keeping up with inflation; waves of layoffs in the tech industry; handwringing over quiet quitting. So… will this year be better, worse, or same old same old? In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans look into a crystal ball with Sheela Subramanian, friend-of-the-pod and co-founder of Sla...

Fancy clothes. Beef Wellington. Movies until midnight. We really are having lovely holiday breaks—which we’re still on! But we’d be lying if we said we didn’t miss you, so Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans are back again with another Brave New Work bonus mini-sode, the “Happy New Year!” edition. This one packs a punch because we have an exciting announcement to share: The Ready is releasing its first-...

The podcast crew is taking a two-week holiday break for some R&R—but if you thought we’d say goodbye to 2022 without saying goodbye to y’all, you’d be wrong. That’s why we made this bonus mini-episode (a.k.a. a mini-sode—and yes, it’s a real thing). In our first-ever Brave New Work mini-sode, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans check out of the year with an extra-special, two-part check-in round. So sli...

Being influential sounds great, even desirable. But doing influence? That’s when alarm bells go off in our brains—because we tend to imagine the act of influencing as manipulative, coercive, and 100% transactional. And sure, we’ve all had icky experiences with influence. But when we flatten its inherent complexity, we risk missing out on influence’s ability to instigate positive impact. Yale Schoo...

We won’t mince words: Layoffs suck. They heap very real stress and chaos onto very real people’s lives. And as we’ve seen reported lately, big waves of layoffs are hitting several companies—and thousands of people—hard right now. This pile of not-good news sparked some questions for us, like: Why are layoffs a go-to cost-cutting lever? What pre-layoff org design decisions put employers and employe...

“Power.” It’s a loaded word that can conjure up feelings of negativity, fear, and general ickiness. And with good reason. If our default definition of power is all about authority and control, then the less of it, the better—right? But if we tilt our head a little and instead see power as the ability to move energy through a system, then it becomes a powerful (sorry, had to) ingredient in making b...

Sometimes, Rodney and Aaron stop by other people’s podcasts to nerd out on the hits we know and love: new ways of working, self-management, breaking down the binary between chaos and bureaucracy, the future of work—the list goes on and on. So today, we’re actually bringing one of those awesome conversations right to your ears. Rodney recently joined Jonathan Westover on his show, Human Capital Inn...

We’ve covered feedback before on the show, because learning how to give and receive it is a key part of team growth and success. But establishing an entire system that lets different flavors of feedback flourish? That’s a different can of worms. So, how do we cultivate feedback-related agreements and norms in a self-managing culture? In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans...

Picture it: Your company’s landed on an important and shiny new project and it needs a team to bring it to life. Cue the barrage of big questions—questions like: “So…who’s on this team? What support will they receive? When will they meet? Wait, is this extra work or something different?”Welcome to the wonderful world of cross-functional teaming. Standing up a cross-functional team is a place where...

Spoiler alert: Your organization already has a Digital HQ. Because whether you’re back in an office Monday through Friday or working remotely in your fluffiest slippers, every team now operates with a mesh of digital tools and systems that constitute where real work gets done day in and day out. But how can you help your already-existent Digital HQ unlock greater team flexibility, collaboration, a...

Show us a podcast that gets better questions than ours, we dare you. Listeners, you’re crushing the question game these days—so we’re heading back to the mailbag (there’s just so much mail there!) to address three juicy ones. And please keep the queries and head-scratchers coming! Because we’ve got more AUA sessions lined up for the future. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodne...

We often talk about complexity and work, but complexity is everywhere: at our schools, sports teams, churches, families… you get the idea. Today, we’re looking at a different kind of complex system that’s as big—and maybe as broken—as it gets: U.S. politics. With the midterm elections around the corner, we wanted to take a closer look at the OS of U.S. politics, asking how its structure is designe...

Odds are you’ve discussed quiet quitting with your colleagues, your friends, your barista, your aunt Barbara… you get the idea. Super-hyped-up conversations about quiet quitting are everywhere these days—but what’s the noise really about? What’s the alleged trend mean or point toward? And if we double-click on quiet quitting, what can we learn about the OS of our workplaces? In this episode on Bra...

[Rebroadcast note: The Ready gathers for its next retreat next week, so there’s no better time to re-air this episode from December 2021.] Wait, haven’t we already covered retreats? Yes. But if the first one explored key dos and don’ts, this one imagines the retreat as a blank sheet of paper and invites you to ask: With unlimited options, what would you do? How would you take an off-site from good...

What exactly is OS coffee? It’s a specific meeting structure we use to explore topics related to our operating system (a.k.a. our OS). But OS coffee isn’t meant to be a formal, note-taking, let’s-finally-get-to-agreement-on-X kind of deal; rather, it’s about making space for different subjects to emerge and to do some shared sensemaking. In fact, it’s so casual that it’s less like a meeting and mo...

What’s going on in our brains when we have breakthroughs? Why do some of our most basic work habits and norms exhaust our minds rather than light them up? If feedback is essential for cognitive development, why can it freak us out and set our teeth on edge? These are some of the big questions David Rock, CEO and co-founder of the Neuroleadership Institute, ponders all of the time. David believes t...

[Rebreoadcast note: This episode originally aired in September 2021.] Patagonia’s purpose is clear: It’s in business to save our home planet. And that clarity’s been present almost since day one of the iconic outdoor clothing and gear company. But how and why was that anchoring mission adopted from the jump? And how has the nearly 50-year-old organization evolved its practices to support its resol...

Taking a break from work can look 1,000 different ways: You could learn how to make homemade pasta; you could visit five new countries; you could spend sunup to sundown swinging in a hammock. What constitutes a break should fit your specific context and needs. And in this way, taking a true, you-shaped vacation—for a week, a month, or even longer—dips into org design knowledge and territory. In th...

Where do our systems for organization and prioritization come from? How do we build discipline around new workflows? When and how do we learn how to work? And what happens when our systems have to gel with others’? Answers to these questions vary from person to person—and they should. Because when it comes to managing our time and tasks, it’s worth challenging “best” practices. In this episode of...

[Rebroadcast note: This episode originally aired in July 2021.] If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: Meetings are the worst. Instead of being a meaningful work tool to help teams strategize efficiently, meetings more often block things—anything—from actually getting done. At The Ready, we’ve got a different method: action meetings. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan...

[Rebroadcast note: This episode originally aired in September 2021.] Today’s episode is a foundational survey class; we’re mapping the territory of the work we do, why we do it, what we’re all about—and why we’d love to talk to your boss. Whether you’re a systems design nerd like us or a newcomer who knows in their bones that work sucks but doesn’t have to, we’ve got answers to your big questions—...

The relationship between structure and impact is an important one for organizations to explore. The same goes for social movements. The Sunrise Movement is a youth-led coalition on a mission to stop climate change—and recently, they placed their own OS under a microscope: How should the org make decisions? How should its principles evolve? How could it balance centralization and decentralization?...

A big frustration we often encounter in our work concerns decision-making. Folks feel like their process is too slow; too fast; includes the wrong people; excludes the right people; is too big; is too small. No matter the specific organizational headaches, the headline basically stays the same: “We know this isn’t working but we can’t fix the problem.” In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dign...