4. Return to Office: Real Issue or Handy Distraction?

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. Prefer to watch instead of listen? Check out the extended video cut of this episode, with even more Rodney and Sam moments, on our Youtube channel. Mentioned references: VUCA "participatory change": BNW Ep. 43 "cross-functional teaming": Future of HR Ep. 1 "strategy pancakes episode": AWWTR Ep. 2 We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air. Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]. Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com.

For decades, face-to-face working has been the default way of working. Launching a new project; untangling an OS problem; updating a team on progress made in the last week—our classic go-to for all those different kinds of work is blocking off time on a calendar. When in doubt, just corral everybody into a room, real or virtual. But this “one-size-fits-all” approach is coming up short as work evolves. And while almost everyone dreads having a meeting-stuffed calendar, ideas for what to try instead can be in short supply. Plus, when 85% of leaders find it hard to trust that their employees are being productive, async work can look like a risky free-for-all. In this episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore how our attachment to synchronous work is hampering performance and why asynchronous work is a mindset, not a tool stack. Looking for other ways to asynchronously enjoy this episode? Check out our Youtube channel for the live video version, or email [email protected] to get a transcript for reading. Mentioned references: Loom Rodney's article on org debt: How to Tackle the Biggest Threat to Your Team's Growth Red, amber, green (RAG status) Tanisi's podcast episode: BNW Ep. 88 with Tanisi Pooran Miro Pitch Pomodoro method We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air. Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]. Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com.

Every time something changes at work, someone’s bound to be upset. Digital transformations take resources from analog teams; restructuring a department can take authority from one group and give it to another; removing a step from a workflow can eliminate a role altogether. Any change, including those meant to make things better, will create winners and losers and that’s bound to kick up a hornet’s nest of feelings. Here’s the puzzling part: Despite years of research showing us that surfacing and processing these feelings is key to unlocking a company’s ability to be adapt, many workplaces often treat emotions as taboo. They’re messy, unpredictable, and nobody wants to touch them—even when ignoring them does more harm that good. Playing pretend isn't getting us anywhere. In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore why we have negative feelings about big feelings and how it’s holding our organizations back from evolving into the places they could be. We're on Youtube! An extended video version of this episode (with extra Rodney and Sam moments) is available to watch there. Mentioned references: Tabea's Meet The Ready post "unconsciously protecting the status quo": Immunity to Change, 2009 book by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey "protection state": On Point of Relationship podcast episode with Frederic Laloux "complicated vs complex": Brave New Work keynote The unpaid emotional labor expected of women at work, 2024 BBC article What Rodney said at SXSW last year: BNW 162: Live from SXSW with Brian Elliott Love the show? Leave us a review and share this episode with your coworkers! We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air. Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].

Ask anyone about organizational silos and they’re bound to tell you they’re bad. When we run Tension and Practice exercises with clients, “We work in silos” often shows up as Tension No. 1 holding a team back. Yet like a moth to a flame, we keep gravitating toward them, building walls that are higher and more insurmountable than ever before. What gives? In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dive into the bottomless ball pit that is organizational silos, exploring why we think they’ll solve all our problems, how they’re actually sabotaging organizations from being effective, and why trying to build bridges between them (rather than designing something new from the ground up) is one of the worst things we can do. Mentioned references: "Ready for Anything structure episode": BNW Ep. 23 "Hollywood Model episode": FoHR Miniseries, Ep. 1 The Ready's Tension & Practice Cards "the previous episode": AWWTR Ep. 4 value stream mapping Spotify chapters and guilds video Sam promised "IDM consent-based governance": BNW Ep. 43 "movies and studios" "retro": BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air. Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]. Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com.

You can’t throw a stone on LinkedIn without hitting at least one post about return-to-office policies. From CEOs to employees, from thought leaders to maybe even your mayor, everyone is taking a side, doubling down, and yelling into the void as loud as they can. Where people work is being treated as the most important issue—the existential sea change that will either make or break a company. In reality, the RTO debate is the superficial fight we have instead of addressing the deeper, tougher, and way more complex issues that really matter (think questions around purpose, trust, "productivity", and communication). And here’s a fun fact: You can’t work well anywhere (in person or remotely) if confusion and misalignment is swirling around your company. In this week’s episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin unpack why we’re still debating where people work, what that obsession costs our organizations, and how to start breaking free of the cycle. Mentioned references: BNW’s first RTO/hybrid work episode: Ep. 79 Erin Grau’s Fortune article “Flexible work is feminist” "Theory Y" Brian Elliott's previous appearances on our show: BNW Ep. 129, BNW Ep. 162, and FoHR Miniseries Ep. 9 "Return-to-Office Mandates" from Mark Ma and Yuye Ding of the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business "Lessons Learned: 1,000 Days of Distributed at Atlassian" "Basecamp": BNW Ep. 4 with Dan Kim Mural Miro Children of Time Previous episodes about retreats and in-person gatherings: BNW Ep. 64, BNW Ep. 82 with Lindsay Caplan, and BNW Ep. 94 We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air. Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected].

1:1s (or one-on-ones) are a ubiquitous part of our daily working lives. These two-person meetings (a manager + a direct report = a classic 1:1) are meant to be a space for diving into individual challenges, fostering trust, building stronger relationships, and providing a forum for feedback and recognition. When designed with intention, they can be great. But at some point, 1:1s jumped the shark. Today, we see more and more companies with an overwhelming “1:1 culture,” where calendars are packed with a million two-person meetings (on top of lots of other meetings), leaving precious little time to get work done. Worse still, most 1:1s include our worst meeting habits: over-indexing on status updates, information hoarding, and bureaucratic theater. What gives? In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin meet one-on-one (see what we did there?) to explore why 1:1 cultures take hold in organizations, the cost that comes with doing them poorly, how to rely on them less, and how to start making the ones you do keep count. Mentioned references: “Tear and share roll” “op rhythm”: BNW Ep. 118 A Beautiful Mind, movie from 2001 “default stack of pancakes” : At Work With The Ready Ep. 2 “Action Meeting”: BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin “retrospectives”: BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney “Donut meetings” “Ali’s 1:1 article” “Lean coffee/OS Coffee”: BNW Ep. 144 We’re on LinkedIn! Follow Rodney, Sam and The Ready for more org design nerdery and join the conversation around episodes after they air. Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]. Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com.

It's January! New beginnings? Ambitious plans? Giant commitments to change? They’re on everyone’s mind. Companies included—since now’s the time when glossy PowerPoint decks are so eagerly rolled out. And those PowerPoints? They’re always brimming with promise for the year ahead. But there's a glaring disconnect between those slides (all 73 of them) and eventual success we often don’t address. Because how frequently do those meticulously crafted plans pan out? Does the new agenda account for the day-to-day running of the company? Is the plan flexible enough to handle economic curveballs? (We remember 2020, right?) The reality is that “traditional strategy” often resembles New Year's resolutions; they’re imbued with good intentions but ultimately destined for disappointment. In this episode of "At Work with The Ready," (new year, new podcast name!) co-hosts Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin explore our deep-rooted conditioning toward conventional planning methods (despite their shortcomings), share what a more complexity conscious approach to strategy looks like, and give you moves to start busting up the annual cycles of frustration, stagnancy, and finger-pointing. Mentioned references: "Getting Things Done and David Allen": Brave New Work Ep. 39 with David Allen "90% of leaders admit strategies fail based on implementation": Closing The Gap: Designing and Delivering a Strategy That Works - The Economist's Intelligence Unit Essential Intent Japanese pancakes, straight from Sam's Instagram algorithm Even/overs: Brave New Work Ep. 44 Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) Looping Red Teaming "Scenario planning": Brave New Work Ep. 34 with Kevin Kelly Adjacent possible Op rhythm "mango sorbet": Brave New Work Ep. 163 Check-In Round Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com Want future of work insights and experiments you can try delivered to your inbox twice a month? Sign up for our newsletter. We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected] Read the book that started it all at bravenewwork.com.

Whether it’s in front of clients or in front of a mic, we talk about change all day long. Having fewer, better meetings; learning to productively disagree; overhauling and evolving the HR function; exploring four-day work weeks—the podcast has covered miles and miles of transformational ground in 4 years. However we don’t often talk about how we’ve changed. And after six seasons and 162 episodes, how could we not be different? We used the show’s hiatus to reflect on where we’ve been and where we want to go—and we reached some bittersweet conclusions. But if we resisted change and all the learning and joy that can come with it, we wouldn’t be The Ready. In this very special episode, Aaron Dignan, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin talk about Brave New Work’s origin story, what they’ve learned making all these episodes (it was 162, right?), and what the show’s future may hold. Trust us, you won’t want to miss it. This episode was recorded with video, so you can see our smiling faces on The Ready’s Youtube channel. Mentioned references: Imoyoshi, home of the purple sweet potato soft serve Ira Glass The Ready's Spotify Wrapped LinkedIn post "Pop up and do less" scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall Supermanage, from Murmur Labs The File Drawer Fields of Work The Future of HR miniseries "the Panera days": The Ready's first "office" was in a Panera near Bryant Park in NYC! Hear more about The Ready's early days in BNW Ep. 158. ------------------ Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected] Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

In July, we began exploring what HR’s current reality looked like and how People teams could evolve into a better, brighter, more adaptive future. Thirteen episodes, three guest interviews, a record breaking AUA, and lots of unexpected hot dog talk later, we’ve reached the end. And while endings can be bittersweet, this miniseries, proudly co-hosted by two org design nerds, is transforming that feeling into a sweet retrospective. In today’s final Future of HR episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin look back on the three months they spent in the deep end of the HR pool and talk about they’ve learned, what’s surprised them, and where their opinions have shifted. Plus, we pull out all the stops with one of the funniest check-in rounds of the series and a little something extra at the end as a thank you for tuning in. Buckle up, brave listeners. Because this isn't really an ending; it's a launchpad for all the exciting adventures HR is truly ready for. Mentioned references: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 film version) Kids Incorporated Kids Incorporated theme song (we listened to it, even though Sam wouldn't) The Boxcar Children School of Rock -------------- Learn more about The Future of HR at our website. Curious where your company sits on our 5-stage maturity model? Take our assessment and find out! Have a burning HR question for Rodney and Sam to answer? Email us at [email protected]. Ready to get started moving your HR department into the future? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. --------------- 00:00 Intro + Check-In: When you were a child, what TV show or movie do you wish you could have been a part of in real life? 05:04 Goals of the FoHR miniseries 12:44 Reception of the miniseries from HR folks 16:51 How Rodney and Sam’s views have changed (or not) since episode 1 25:48 Convictions that are stronger now than when we started 29:52 Final takeaways: If you remember nothing else, remember this one thing 32:38 What’s next on your FoHR journey 34:42 Thank-you 35:31 Blooper + humor reel

HR departments struggle to be all things to all stakeholders while delivering on the most strategic priorities of the business. But when we dig into the OS of HR, we find a resource-constrained function that contains multitudes. Long range people priorities are deemed negotiable, HR’s domain expertise isn’t respected, and the function acts as a service-provider when it should be guiding the organization's evolution. This week, Rodney Evans sits down with HR industry giant Josh Bersin to discuss his book Irresistible: The Seven Secrets of the World’s Most Enduring, Employee-Focused Organizations and dig into how HR must transform itself to enable a shift to more profitable, resilient, human organizations. They explore what makes a company “irresistible,” the tidal wave that is AI, and the critical role HR plays in shifting a workplace’s culture. (Editor’s note: This episode was recorded in July, so many things Josh talks about as “upcoming” are already out in the world! Look below for a full list of current references.) Learn more about Josh Bersin on his website, LinkedIn, and Twitter (X). Learn more about Josh’s book here. Learn more about the Josh Bersin Company at their website and explore the courses offered in Josh Bersin Academy. Mentioned references: Josh Bersin’s Systemic HR model Microsoft research about employees thinking they are productive vs what their leaders think Study about managers feeling more stress than employees W. Edwards Deming The AI episode of Josh’s podcast Rodney refers to: AI Deep Dive: Three Generations of HR Tech AI Solutions in the Market (May 15 2023) -------------- Learn more about The Future of HR at our website. Curious where your company sits on our 5-stage maturity model? Take our assessment and find out! Have a burning HR question for Rodney and Sam to answer? Email us at [email protected]. Ready to get started moving your HR department into the future? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. --------------- 00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s something that you’re trying to learn right now? 03:33 Story behind the origins of Josh’s book 09:58 The shift behind “Coach, Not Boss” 16:17 Concept of “success” in Irresistible companies vs traditional companies 21:20 How irresistible companies are transforming their HR departments 30:11 HR leader Interview tips to identify an irresistible company 33:49 HR and AI and how to think about it 40:23 Where HR should start engaging with AI 43:04 Wrap up: Share this episode with your HR friends!