The Ready is a future-of-work consultancy that drives long-lasting organizational transformation by taking a systems approach to complex problems. We help leaders navigate increasing uncertainty with a modern playbook for change that meets this moment. Organizations have the opportunity to thrive in complexity; how we seize that opportunity demands reinvention.
Since 2015 we've helped hundreds of organizations from all around the world transform the way they work.
Oh I love the additional intro with Rodney! This makes me feel much better-super nice to see you well. You were missed! And at the same time, Sam and I had a great time chatting together. The nerdy impulses ran riot lol.
Progrssive ruin via taxes and hyper regulation. Industry, innovation and jobs pushed out of our country. Capitalism has eliminated 80% of world poverty in a few decades. Poverty dominated until about 1895. Dr. Jordan Peterson 😊
Great topic! I can't wait to listen to the whole episode :) Designing good workshops is both a science and an art, and you can draw from fields such as applied improvisation, design thinking, game thinking, complex systems design, experience design, applied larpology, and applied ludology. There is also a wealth of fascinating research to build upon, from collective intelligence studied by Anita Woolley, to group flow states (theoretical model by Keith Sawyer), the impact of status, power, and hierarchy on communication, and (of course!) psychological safety, belonging cues, and more. In addition, we have countless tools for designing and moderating group processes, starting from Liberating Structures and various retrospectives, to social warm-ups from applied improvisation, and narrative situation mapping techniques from educational larps. As a pleasant, soft, yet quite practical inspiration, I recommend "The Art of Gathering," dedicated to intentional design and the conduct of various events.
All good ideas! And coincidentally, BNW episode 82 is coming to RU-vid in the next few weeks, which was Aaron and Rodney's interview with Lindsey Caplan about "The Art of Gathering". Make sure to check it out if you haven't listened to it yet.
So... Three things: (1) the "TLDR: Leaders (collectively) should be org designers. The work of transformation is messy. Get a therapist (or a coach) because doing "the job" means 50% of the people will be upset with you 100% of the time and you need support to navigate that" is such a confirmation of 10+ years of my worklife as an HR professional and it was reassuring to hear. (2) Our education system is set-up EXACTLY like Rodney describes in terms of how people respond at work: people will rise to the expectation set for them. There is a ton of scholarship on this in the education space and may be a good place to look to understand how to do this for organizations and their teams. With the exception of the people who will work to high standardas no matter what and the people who won't no matter what, I have found in my work that the only other exception is where leaders poorly model or do not themselves live up to those expectations and staff, no matter where they might naturally fall, often will only rise to the expectations modeled; and (3) It is my experience that the "push the leader/authority to the edge/fewer decisions coming to the senior VP level" and "get input from everybody and then the vp level/Senior leader decides" dichotomy exists in astronomical levels in small non-profits (<150; <$20m revenue) and is one of the major causes of failed culture and DEIA initiatives as well as employee burnout and low retention rates. I didn't mean to write a dissertation, but I always get so much from these episodes. Thanks so much!
Generally, your content resonates exceptionally deep with me, in terms of the values presented, dealing with complexity, and even aligning closely with my research... However, there is one element that puzzles me... Moving communication fully to an open Slack. I don't understand the framework for how this can be done in a truly functional and healthy way for people. For context, let me clarify: 1. Yes, I understand the issues related to email communication, how emails create silos, and similar problems. 2. Yes, I am 100% in favor of default transparency, everyone having access to key information, and creating space for "burstiness" and creative emergence. What I'm concerned about is that open chat communication on Slack or similar apps: 1. Will prevent people from doing real deep work. 2. Will create constant FOMO in people due to unanswered messages and unchecked notifications. Even Alastair in your short retro demo mentioned in the check-in that unanswered slack messages distracted him. 3. Will lead to an overload of irrelevant information, updates, and conversations that one has to sift through to find what is truly important. What protocols, working agreements, etc., do you implement to enable people to work in deep, uninterrupted concentration?
Thanks for the comment! A couple of thoughts: 1. Slack must be treated as truly asynchronous. You cannot / should not expect Slack conversations to be happening in real time. This helps lessen the pressure of feeling like you must chime-in constantly. 2. Thread discipline is important. Keep topics together in threads so you aren't overwhelmed with irrelevant notifications from topics that don't matter. 3. Liberally mute/leave channels. There should be no reputational cost to leaving a channel that is no longer relevant or serving you. 4. Everyone must develop their own discipline for how to incorporate communication tools into their day-to-day routines. It's no different with email. You can easily just leave your email inbox open all day the same way you leave Slack open all day. Everyone must develop their own relationship to potential distractions and figure out when & how to click-in to periods of deep work. For example, I liberally use the "Save For Later" feature to create a list of messages I want to go back to when I have time rather than feeling like I need to respond to everything in the moment. 5. Organizational discipline around channels focused on specific topics. If all conversations are happening in the same channel it's hard to know what you can ignore or what you can check on a different cadence. By having channels dedicated to narrow topics I know that some channels I only have to look at on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and some channels I don't have to monitor at all. 6. I've noticed that many people try to bring a "completionist" attitude to how they use Slack. I think that's a mistake. Using Slack well means NOT trying to read every message or every channel and trusting that the most important conversations will find you and/or it's not vital to be involved in all the things all the time. Just a few thoughts off the top of my head... hope these are useful!
Talking about reviews and encouraging mails... There are also people who write very nice comments under your YT videos, but it seems that no one appreciates them anymore... 😭
False! We DO appreciate nice comments in RU-vid. I just grew up in an era of the internet where we all knew to "not read the comments" if we wanted to retain our sanity but I'm doing my best to learn new ways!
@@samspurlin Of course, I'm just teasing :) But... do you have a Discord or something for having conversations with the community? So I don't have to write walls of text under your videos on RU-vid? I can still write them here to feed the algorithm gods.
I am new to your content and absolutely loving it! I laughed at Rodney's story about being brought into HR and it being obvious they didn't want you there. As a 20+ year HR professional, I have definitely had that feeling. One was because the consultant was suggesting things to the leadership that was already suggested by HR but was poo poo'd and then all of the sudden it's the best idea ever (facepalm). And another time was when what we were working on was so specific to our org chemistry and culture and the consultant was pretty clearly just suggesting the same thing they had suggested to whomever else without really considering our culture and core values and it felt like a waste of time, energy, and money on top of time, energy, and money we didn't have.
Welcome to the party! Yeah, leadership not taking HR's expertise seriously and only "hearing" an idea when it comes from a third-party is such a pervasive problem. And then when that third party comes in, truly doesn't understand the context, and then proposes some copy-paste solutions from other clients that aren't a fit, that's just the WORST. With your background, we really think you'd like the Future of HR miniseries we did last summer...it should show up in our channel's playlists.
Very cool material! No one is commenting, so I'll comment that I appreciate your 6-10 minute shortforms that you've been posting on YT recently :) I would even happily watch 20-30 minutes of retro or a full Action Meeting facilitated by you. Fingers crossed for the growth of your YT, because on Medium & podcast you already rule <3
I am incredibly grateful for your content! The subject matter fascinates me, so I listen to a ton of podcasts on similar topics, but I almost exclusively wait for yours like it's an episode of my favorite drama series <3 I am a researcher, educator, and consultant on group dynamics in business, specializing in three topics: A) building a feedback culture in organizations, B) the impact of power, status, and hierarchy on collaboration, and C) cooperative group processes in small teams, including group flow states, collective intelligence etc. Your podcast offers me new contexts for thinking about the above areas, interpreting them within more progressive organizational frameworks, applying them in the more complex challenges of today's world. Once again, thank you for all the valuable wisdom you regularly provide on the podcast, on your website, and of course in your detailed articles on Medium. PS1. Only 183 subscribers on YT ?! Something needs to be done about that :) Anyway, I recommend you wherever I can, I send out articles about OS Canvas and Org Debt to my network on LinkedIn, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your growth! :D
• I do project accounting and am looking at roles that may involves getting hundreds of accounts to be structured in a way to work for years. The idea in this video of gettig thigns "right for now"; can always change them later; and "not exhaustive" is the other end of the scale. And there is room for both: perhaps that's a decision someone needs to make and be clear about.
This just came on time, and I am literally astonished by the unexplainable coincidence! Hope to have more and more of this with real hands on experience on what is really happening inside workplace, and how to look at it from different perspective
Long time listener, first time watcher :D Just wanted to say, that I'm listening to like a dozen of podcasts focused on work design, org design, org & work psychology and similar topics, and I can honestly say that The Brave New Work & At Work with the Ready are just top notch - mindblowingly GOOOOOOD. Thank you for all of the AMAZING content you are putting out there for the last couple of years <3
