Afleveringen
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Producer's Note: It’s been two years since this episode first aired, and it’s every bit as relevant today. We’ve got some exciting things on these themes coming really soon, so revisit this one and we'll see in two weeks with a brand new episode.
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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.
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Mentioned references:
VUCA
"participatory change": BNW Ep. 43
"cross-functional teaming": Future of HR Ep. 1
"strategy pancakes episode": AWWTR Ep. 2
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s your best advice for moving?
04:37 Disclaimer: This isn’t a takedown episode of traditional consulting
06:33 The Pattern: Traditional consulting is a band-aid for a broken OS
10:20 The deliverable is often confused with an outcome
13:20 Executives and C-suite buy projects for the visible work, not the invisible work
15:31 Traditional consulting is a hedge for the CEO–Board of Directors relationship
17:52 Traditional consulting works around and outside a broken OS; it doesn’t fix it
25:30 Builds dependency on a third party for expertise or sensemaking the market
28:30 What to do instead: prioritize effectiveness even/over growth and extraction
31:34 Figure out where you’ll always want an outside partner, and where you want to learn to do it internally
34:19 Seek our partners you want to be positively disrupted by, if you want to be disrupted
37:57 Contract for the partnership you want and what your needs are
39:19 Decide for yourself what you need and then ask for it, rather than having a third party tell you what you need
42:42 Be clear about what you’re buying, and what it will require from you
45:50 Closing round: What did we learn?
49:10 Wrap up: share the show with your friends and coworkers!
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Your company announced a shiny new transformation, set to herald a new era of possibility. But a few weeks in, it's starting to feel a lot more like a top-down cost-cutting exercise with a nicer label—and people are afraid that speaking up will put a target on their back. Sound familiar?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener caught in the middle of it all: working with the consultants, reporting to senior leaders, and hearing directly from employees who aren't buying the official story. They unpack why "transformation" means different things to different buyers, why RIFs aren't always the villain, and how the gap between stated goals and actual behavior erodes trust faster than any layoff.
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Mentioned references:
traditional consulting: AWWTR Ep. 8
layoffs and restructuring: AWWTR AUA
different approaches to layoffs: BNW Ep. 152
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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You've built the asset. You've done the comms. You even held office hours (that no one came to). And still…nothing changes. Sound familiar? These moves are still everyone’s go-to plays for substantial transitions in the workplace, even when we have decades of experience that they fall flat.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam dig into one of the most under-explored problems in organizational life: how you actually get people to do shit. Not just understand it. Not just nod at it in a meeting. Actually do it. They walk through why the classic change playbook (comms, training, socialization, stakeholder management) keeps failing, and what a real system of activation actually looks like.
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Mentioned references:
"change management is broken": AWWTR Ep. 26 with Michael Bungay Stanier
"comms and change management": BNW Ep. 3 with Deirdre Latour
"complicated vs complex"
Ira Glass quote about taste
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What's a tech habit that reveals your true generational age?
03:49 Why "getting shit done" doesn't get enough airtime
05:32 The three-step chain: information → understanding → behavior
06:46 Real example: Rodney's role change at The Ready and what governance actually did
09:16 The asset creator's blind spot
15:34 Living into your authority
18:09 Why clarity (including hard deadlines) is a gift
19:49 Which kinds of change need enrollment vs. just execution
24:07 Why the big reveal keeps happening (and why it keeps failing)
27:09 The big bang is often avoiding user feedback
30:49 Ira Glass on developing taste
32:57 Iterating as you go
34:50 Change management is just marketing inside your own company
38:22 Change 1: Lower activation energy with explicit, clear asks
40:34 Change 2: Run a system of socialization, not just an event
43:55 Change 3: Remove things and make space before asking for more
44:54 Change 4: Keep it ugly to unlock better participation
47:50 Wrap
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
The higher up you go, the more everyone expects you to have the answers. Your team wants reassurance about AI. Your peers want to know what other companies are doing. Leadership wants confidence you're not sure you have. But what if the honest answer to most of it is, "I don't know?" and what if that's actually a sign you're paying closer attention than the people who seem so sure?
In this Ask Us Anything, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener feeling the weight of expectations and offer a reframe: you don't need certainty about the what if you can develop confidence in the how. They also dig into why the leaders who always seem to have answers rarely get their receipts checked, and Rodney shares a personal practice for tuning into the quieter, wiser voice underneath the noise of emotion and intellect.
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Office politics doesn't happen because people are scheming. It happens because no one wrote anything down. In the absence of clear ways of working, the preferences of the most powerful people fill the vacuum and suddenly half your attention is spent learning whose attachment format to use rather than doing the actual work.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam dig into one of the most universal and underdiagnosed org patterns: the political operating system. They explore why politics can feel more fun than good process, why "influence without authority" is just pandering with better branding, and how to start replacing implicit norms with something more durable than whoever's in the room at that moment.
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Mentioned references:
The Ready’s OS Canvas: https://www.theready.com/os-canvas
Essential Intent: BNW Ep. 90 with Greg McKeown
Even/Overs: BNW Ep. 44
Dual Transformation: AWWTR Ep. 43
Andrea Robb
Action Meeting Episode: BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin
Directly Responsible Individual (DRI)
User Manual to Me: BNW Ep. 159
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s a skill you rarely get to show off?
03:08 The Pattern: We cater to those in power when there’s no org clarity
05:17 Leveraging relationships to do work feels good in the moment
09:12 Discerning what’s best for a leader vs. best for the work
13:11 Experience navigating CEO preference
17:06 Politics is more fun than building a good OS
20:12 Leaders come and go, and take their preferences with them
22:08 Politicking wastes organizational attention
27:00 Short term politics at odds with long term value
31:32 Andrea Robb’s organizing principles
34:23 Leadership politics keeps you from the truth
37:10 Example navigating a leader during an offsite
41:33 Change #1: Don’t depend on only one person
43:55 Change #2: Get a new set of eyes to challenge assumptions
46:34 Change #3: Write. It. Down.
48:44 Wrap up: Leave us a review!
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Every HR team is getting the same ask right now: rewrite our job descriptions to reflect AI. It sounds reasonable—until you realize you're being asked to update a document that was already a little broken for a world that's changing faster than any static artifact can keep up with. So where do you even start? And is the job description itself actually the right place to begin?
In this AUA, Rodney and Sam flip the question entirely—arguing that the smarter move is to start with what AI can actually do in your organization, define the human's role in relation to that, and why living, dynamic approaches to role clarity are more essential now than ever.
Mentioned references:
"traditional consulting": AWWTR Ep. 8
"talent marketplace": FoHR Miniseries, Ep. 7
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Everyone talks about slaying bureaucracy and cutting organizational sludge but there's an equally pernicious force that doesn't get nearly enough airtime: the organizational debt created by too little structure. The chaos tax is real, and it's usually being paid by everyone except the person creating it.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam unpack the founder-led chaos pattern: why it happens, why it feels like speed to the person at the top while feeling like paralysis to everyone else, and what minimum viable process actually looks like in practice. They get into learned helplessness, productive friction, the hidden cost of unilateral decisions, and why the call for structure will probably have to come from outside the house.
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Mentioned references:
"Sparticus Merlin Spurlin": Check-In from AWWTR Ep. 45/2
Organizational debt
Founder mode episode: AWWTR Ep. 22
RACI: AWWTR Ep. 10
participatory meeting structure: BNW Ep. 49 with Keith McCandless
consent vs consensus: BNW Ep. 74 with Ted Rau
The Ready's Proposal Template
Action Meeting episode: BNW Ep. 80
The Ready's OS Canvas
00:00 Intro + Check-In: If you could hang out with any cartoon character, who would it be?
04:08 The Pattern: Lack of structure leads to chaos
05:56 Founders mistake their experience for everyone’s experience
11:49 Growth is unavoidable for diversity of thinking
15:53 You have to choose your slow
18:33 Example of consent
24:56 Chaotic orgs are brittle orgs
25:56 Cycle of learned helplessness and founder paranoia
28:49 Chaos glorifies unsustainable heroic behavior
33:05 Making a system where the founder doesn’t have to “be the savior”
35:50 Preserving the essential friction to good work
39:57 Idea 1: Minimum viable operating rhythm
42:38 Idea 2: Get external coaching for the founder/leader
44:49 Idea 3: Make work more visible and public
47:01 Wrap up: Leave us a review and send us your questions!
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
As AI handles more and more of the actual work, a genuinely hard question emerges: how do you maintain shared purpose when there's no single organization anchoring it?
In this mini AUA, Rodney and Sam argue that more automation requires more intentional human connection, not less — and that AI might actually force a long-overdue shift from obsessing over outputs to talking about outcomes and purpose.
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Most leaders want to believe they're building something durable: a company that matters, a culture that sticks, a system people can rely on. But what if most organizations don't have the staying power of a great city like Venice...and instead are more like a gold rush town? What if that same company is more likely to change you than you are to change it?
In this episode, Sam sits down with John Cutler, writer of The Beautiful Mess and Head of Product at Dotwork, to pull on the threads John has been obsessively following for years: how organizations actually work, why seeing patterns and being able to act on them are completely different skills, how leadership is like game design, and why embracing the mess might be smarter than chasing clarity.
Learn more about John and Dotwork:
Read his newsletter
On LinkedIn
Dotwork
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Mentioned references:
Dr. Cat Hicks
John's post about "the slide"
W. Edwards Deming
"Hollow Knight and Silksong"
John's post with Tom Kerwin
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety
This Beautiful Mess (the emo band)
John's old Medium posts
North Star Framework
Team Topologies, book by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What was your first job and did you learn anything from it that you still use today?
02:34 Finding your organizational trigger words
08:41 Can you really change your company?
11:12 Most companies are more like gold rush towns than lasting institutions
15:26 Finding joy at work when the company won't love you back
18:29 Every leader is a game designer
21:45 Stepping back and seeing the system
27:55 Why chasing clarity at work might be the wrong goal
33:20 Having all the data and asking the wrong questions
35:34 How Dotwork is rethinking organizational strategy tools
40:42 Building flexible operating systems that leaders will actually use
44:14 Building a generalist career in a specialist world
50:21 Leave us a review and share the show with a friend
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
You've done the hard work. Your team cracked the code on a new process/workflow/policy/design, your ways of working are genuinely better, and now...everyone else is actively uninterested. It's infuriating, and also completely predictable.
In this mini AUA, Rodney and Sam unpack why good ideas don't automatically spread in federated structures, from classic Not Invented Here syndrome to the underappreciated truth that you can't export a finished experience and skip the struggle. They make the case for becoming an internal consultant rather than an evangelist — offering scaffolding, not superiority.
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Compensation is where human psychology and organizational systems collide—and in Part 1, Rodney and Sam named why it so often turns into a hedonic treadmill: every lever you pull to reduce dissatisfaction tends to raise expectations and create new dissatisfaction. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, start there for the “why this is so messy” foundation.
In Part 2, Rodney and Sam move from diagnosis to design: what principles should a compensation system actually be built on—and what do you do next? They walk through practical comp first principles and explore concrete moves teams can experiment with—like simplifying comp, reducing negotiation, and creating healthier feedback loops.
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Mentioned references:
"previous comp episode": AWWTR Ep. 45, Part 1
"JEDI": BNW Ep. 40 with Sharan Bal
"Midnight Zone": Depthfinding Miniseries
BNW Ep. 6 with Joel Gascoigne
BNW Ep. 36 with Nathan Barry
BNW Ep. 84 with David Buckmaster
BNW Ep. 89 with Nikki Kaufman
00:00 Intro: What Would You Rename Yourself?
03:26 Comp Principle #1: Pay and Human Dignity
07:21 Comp Principle #2: Pay Equity at Work
10:06 Comp Principle #3: Salary Clarity and Transparency
15:56 Comp Principle #4: Collective Alignment on Pay
19:04 Comp Principle #5: Employee Participation in Pay Decisions
21:47 Comp Principles #6 & #7: Simplicity and Talking About Pay Less
24:12 Redesign Idea #1: Anonymous Team Rewards Ranking
25:48 Redesign Idea #2: Eliminating Salary Negotiation
28:03 Redesign Idea #3: Interview Elsewhere to Reset Pay Expectations
29:38 Redesign Idea #4: Create Transparency for Employees
32:44 Outro: Rate the Podcast + Share At Work With The Ready
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Small doesn't mean simple. In fact, smaller organizations are often more complex in the ways that are hardest to manage — personalities loom larger, every conversation carries more weight, and the line between "business problem" and interpersonal drama gets uncomfortably thin.
In this mini AUA, Rodney and Sam break down why smaller orgs typically need to install minimum viable structure to tame the chaos — while larger orgs are usually trying to remove it. Same toolkit, opposite motion. They also explore the quiet inflection point that hits somewhere under 50 people, when "everyone knows everything" suddenly stops being true and no one quite knows what to do about it.
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Mentioned references:
"strategy": AWWTR Ep. 2
"principles-based budgeting"
Dunbar's number
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Compensation is one of the messiest parts of any organization. Pay becomes a proxy for belonging, validation, performance, identity, and status… which means it’s almost guaranteed to feel unfair, confusing, and emotionally loaded. Layer on a capitalist “more is always better” mindset, and you get the hedonic treadmill of work: every raise increases expectations, which creates the next round of dissatisfaction.
In Part 1 of this two-part series on compensation, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into why comp is so psychologically charged, why most systems are overly complex, and why the “objective” company lens will never fully match the lived human experience of money.
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Mentioned references:
baby hyenas
hedonic treadmill
performance management episode: AWWTR Ep. 39
"authority field": The Ready's OS Canvas
FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) aka "Big Tech"
EOT (Employee-Owned Trust)
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s the best animal you’ve seen recently?
04:07 The pattern: No level of compensation ever feels like enough.
10:17 Comp becomes a proxy for self-worth
14:16 Setting individual comp levels
23:23 Importance of real pay transparency, not “bands”
27:24 Comp “up and to the right” ignores market value
31:25 Setting team-level comp and rewards
36:04 Shared rewards vs Hunger Games for sales teams
38:29 Is equity a good thing…or a trap?
46:09 Wrap Up: Continued next time in part 2
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
AI pressure is landing squarely on Learning & Development teams. Execs want “future skills”…yesterday. The tension? How do you stop churning out more courses and start building real capabilities in the age of AI?
In this AUA mini episode, Rodney and Sam share the first moves they’d make if they were leading L&D right now. From getting hands-on with workflow automation tools to shifting from tool training toward systems thinking and experimentation, they outline how L&D can move from reactive skill provider to strategic capability builder.
Want to build skills like this to help your team succeed in 2026? Learn about our Capability Catalyst program: https://hubs.la/Q040ccYF0
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Mentioned references:
recent change skills episode: AWWTR Ep. 42
Relay
n8n
Ethan Mollick
Greg Shove: AWWTR Ep. 41
Scott Galloway
Chase Adams
EvolvingAI
Morning Brew
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
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?
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Mentioned references:
r/antiwork
Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi and Flow
Target CEO comp package (note: New CEO’s comp package is roughly $16m, vs over $70m for the prior CEO in 2020)
triple bottom line
John Rawls and A Theory of Justice
00:00 Check-In: What’s your energy like right now?
04:04 Divorcing doing what’s “good work” from ROI
08:16 A “good” experience is the exception rather than the rule
10:06 Protecting yourself isn’t “selling out”
15:41 Spending our attention on worthy things
21:35 Leadership vs. worker power disparity is broken
27:31 Ethically designed companies never are publicly traded
31:07 Principles and values of ethical orgs
40:35 Joy at work shouldn’t be nickled 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. -
When the people at the center of power feel well-served by the current system, how do you create change? This week’s listener question gets at a frustrating reality: sometimes the OS is optimized for the very people you’d need to convince. The business is growing, shareholders are happy, and the executives at the top don’t feel the friction you’re experiencing. Add geography, hierarchy, and distance from decision-makers, and it can feel impossible to generate momentum from the edges.
In this mini AUA episode, Rodney and Sam get honest about what’s actually within your control, and when it’s worth accepting that you won’t move the center—and when it’s smarter to redirect your energy toward the surface area you can influence.
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Most organizations are built to do exactly what they do…and that’s the problem. When a core business starts to decay due to disruption, automation, or shifting customer demand, the instinct is to double down on efficiency, cost cutting, and short-term fixes. But that focus often crowds out the harder, riskier work of building what comes next. Nearly a decade ago, Dual Transformation offered a clear and compelling framework for this dilemma, yet nobody seems to be actually doing it.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin unpack why dual transformations are so rare, why it’s even harder than it sounds, and why it matters more than ever in an AI-shaped economy. They dig into the tensions between “business A” (the core) and “business B” (the future), the funding and operating system traps that kill new growth, and practical moves leaders and internal change agents can make to actually pull of two transformations at once instead of just talking about it.
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Mentioned references:
Type One vs Type Two fun
Enneagram 7: AWWTR Ep. 33 with Liz Orr
Ulysses (book)
Dual Transformation (book)
Clayton Christensen and disruptive innovation
taxi and uber disruption
Eisenhower matrix
"Squirrel"
Sam's manifesto
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s some type two fun you’ve had recently?
04:29 What is Dual Transformation and why now?
13:27 Sounds simple, yet deceptively hard
21:05 The 3 crisis points of a dual transformation
27:12 Recognizing when you’re in a dying business
30:57 Engineering a dual transformation from the inside out
37:24 Navigating the emotions of the dying business
39:14 Idea 1: Weekly feedback routines with customers
43:07 Idea 2: Import as little as possible from the old company
45:59 Idea 3: Write the manifesto for both businesses
47:29 Bonus Idea: Read Dual Transformation!
48:26 Wrap up
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
While many organizations claim they’re cutting red tape, the underlying drivers often look more like cost pressure, market correction, or AI anxiety dressed up as structural reform. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam unpack the recent wave of layoffs framed as efforts to “reduce bureaucracy”—and why that explanation deserves some skepticism.
They explore when reducing org depth can be the right move, why boom-and-bust hiring cycles create hidden work, and what companies would actually do differently if bureaucracy reduction were the real goal.
Mentioned references:
layoffs at Amazon
layoffs in consulting
layoffs at UPS
"org debt"
Got a work question like this one you'd like us to answer? Email us at [email protected]
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Want to build skills like this to help your team succeed in 2026? Learn about our Capability Catalyst program.
Enterprise change is getting harder, not easier—and in 2026, “having the right ideas” isn’t enough to move transformation. You need personal capability that lets you see what’s really happening, design with real users, and move groups through hard conversations without turning everything into theater. Good intentions and smart frameworks may have worked in the past, but what got us here won’t get us where we need to go.
In this episode, Rodney and Sam dive deep on the three most useful transformation enabling skills for the coming year, and share practical ways for how to level up your capability toolkit to thrive in our current pace of change.
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Mentioned references:
Sam's teaching
metacognition
Bloom's taxonomy
"MG" - McChrystal Group
situational awareness
"the balcony"
The Mom Test
The Future of HR
Matt Basford
"business model fit chart"
"Henry Ford quote"
Liberating Structures
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s good right now?
04:09 The Pattern
05:49 Skill 1: Metacognitive awareness
10:16 Reframing your interactions and experiences
15:57 Building your metacognition skills
21:05 Skill 2: User-Centered Design and Feedback
28:45 User feedback is not a one time activity
34:34 Skill 3: Expert facilitation
39:39 Real skilled facilitation is mostly invisible
43:03 Lots of work happens outside the room
50:08 Leveling up as a facilitator
52:30 Wrap up: Leave the show a review and share with a friend
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. -
Starting a company with a blank slate sounds like a dream—but it’s also a trap. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener question about how to design an organizational operating system from scratch, without inheriting all the baggage of traditional management.
They argue for resisting the urge to over-design early, letting real tension (not theory) drive structure, and focusing on a few foundational practices that scale. From operating rhythms and Kanban boards to experimentation and “sky sensing,” this episode breaks down what’s actually worth putting in place early—and what’s better left until it hurts.
Mentioned references:
"op rhythm": BNW Ep. 118
"strategy": AWWTR Ep. 2
"experimentation": AWWTR Ep. 38
"retrospectives": BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney
Kanban board
The Ready's Experiment Proposal Template
"The Sky" from Depthfinding
Mia Wise
Schedule a Sky Session with us!
Got a work question like this one you'd like us to answer? Email us at [email protected]
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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios. - Laat meer zien
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