[This episode originally aired in March 2020.] 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, we talk about a concept The Ready calls "future tension," which is what happens when we let our worries about the future hijack the present. Later, we’re joined by Thomas Thomison, founding partner of Encode.org, who takes us deep into the origins of the concept and teaches us how to overcome it. Learn more about Thomas Thomison and Encode.org at https://encode.org/ Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Brave New Work

Future Tension w/ Thomas Thomison [Rebroadcast]

Think “union” and what comes to mind? Collective agreements and community building? Power struggles and strikes? Sepia-toned photographs of early-20th century factory floors? If you’ve never been in or around a union, they can carry a whiff of mystique—even old-fashionedness. That’s why we asked Ready member Tanisi Pooran, who’s worked in the field of labor organizing and workers’ rights, to help us demystify the process a bit. They shed light on the common people-positive practices both unions and The Ready uphold, how our two worlds could cooperate and help each other evolve, and why anti-union feelings still persist at even the most progressive and forward-thinking organizations. Learn more about Tanisi and their work here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanisi-pooran Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

The future of workers' rights w/ Tanisi Pooran

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you an exciting announcement. The Ready is hiring a first-rate Market Maker, someone who can orchestrate explosive growth in service of our purpose and steward The Ready’s approach to sales and growth. If creating a diverse pipeline of leads, building relationships with target clients, and reinventing the traditional craft of sales (among other related responsibilities) sounds like a party you—or someone spectacular in your orbit—should join, check out the full role posting and application below. We’re excited to meet you! Now let’s grow something together. Read all about the role here: https://www.notion.so/theready/Growth-The-Ready-6a9e364d59854874a9fbae8d1e3a01af Apply here: https://theready.typeform.com/to/mvh71Zb1

Bonus Episode: Join The Ready!

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 resolute pledge to sustainability? Luckily, there’s someone with answers to these questions: Vincent Stanley is Patagonia’s Director of Philosophy and co-author with Yvon Chouinard of The Responsible Company. In this episode, we speak to Vincent about Patagonia’s better-known successes, lesser-known failures, the experiments it’s had to flex during the pandemic, and what a responsible company of the future can and should look like. Learn more about The Responsible Company here: https://www.patagonia.com/product/the-responsible-company-what-weve-learned-from-patagonias-first-forty-years-paperback-book/BK233.html Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

How Patagonia became Patagonia w/ Vincent Stanley

What exactly does joy have to do with software development? If you ask Rich Sheridan, CEO and Chief Storyteller of Menlo Innovations, the answer is pretty simple: Everything. According to Rich, joy is central to inspiring, sustaining, and steering the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based software company, which has been experimenting with new ways of working for more than two decades. In this episode, we speak with Rich about the personal struggles that first led him to future-of-work thinking; how some of Menlo’s vital practices—like pairing two developers together daily and having them work on a shared computer—have evolved over the years; and why “Make mistakes faster” is a longtime Menlo mantra. Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Surfacing the joy w/ Rich Sheridan

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—about implementing self-management at your own organization; about assuaging fears of team effectiveness or brittleness; about leader’s becoming more power-literate and less ego-filled; and a whole lot more. So…how does this apply to you? We’ll put it this way: If you’re involved in a complex system with more than two human beings (spoiler alert: you are!), you’re already doing this work—and we’re here to help make it awesome. Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Brave New Work 101

Talking about compensation at a job (a.k.a. the total pay and benefits you get in exchange for your labor) can be excruciating. But why? It’s not because compensation designers are inherently evil, argues David Buckmaster, Nike’s Director of Global Retail Compensation. Rather, it’s because our system of pay is broken and neglected. When it comes to pay, Buckmaster believes the greater sin is inertia, not malevolence. That’s why he wrote a book—Fair Pay: How to Get a Raise, Close the Wage Gap, and Build Stronger Businesses—busting open compensation’s black box; that’s also why we spoke to him about pay transparency, accessible data, exciting compensation experiments, and why the so-called labor shortage is really a wage shortage. Learn more about David's work and check out his new book here: https://www.davidbuckmasterbooks.com/ 'The Good Jobs Strategy' by Zeynep Ton: https://www.zeynepton.com/book/ Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Pulling back the curtain on pay w/ David Buckmaster

[This episode originally aired in May 2020] Most of us are working remotely. But we’re just treading water, we haven’t really mastered it. That’s why it’s important to talk about remote work after the novelty wears off—when the home office is just... the office. In this episode, we speak with Sid Sijbrandij, Cofounder and CEO of GitLab, about how their 1,290 team members work remotely in support of a $2.75B business. For Sid’s team, remote work is a way of life. What can we learn from them? Learn more about GitLab at https://about.gitlab.com/ and find Sid on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sytses You can read GitLab's guide to remote work here: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/ Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Beyond Remote w/ Sid Sijbrandij [Rebroadcast]

Throughout the past year, many organizations have taken long-overdue looks in the mirror and started the hard but necessary work of examining how they perpetuate systemic injustice. (That includes us.) The Ready works in systems design, which means that in a world wracked—and in some ways defined—by inequity, it’s our job to look at how the systems we build contribute to supremacist thinking and behavior. In this episode, we learn (and unlearn) from Dr. Akilah Cadet, an executive coach and the founder and CEO of Change Cadet, about the overlap between dominant systems and white supremacy, what being an antiracist company actually means, and how to still hold space for lightness and humor. Learn more about Akilah and her organization, Change Cadet, here: https://www.changecadet.com/theteam Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Building antiracist organizations w/ Akilah Cadet

The sit-down-and-slowly-zone-out-while-Joe-describes-50-slides type of meeting isn’t at all fun…but it is extremely common. Most work gatherings happen because someone wants us to absorb, consume, or comply with information. But if you’re actually hoping to change behavior or get a team stoked about a new initiative, this push-style of gathering just won’t cut it (and no, it’s not Zoom’s fault). In this episode, we ask Lindsey Caplan, a communication strategist and author of the forthcoming book The Gathering Effect, about why good gatherings aren’t one-size-fits-all, how to generate legitimate buy-in, and how to make your next all-hands meeting impactful and even, well, fun. Learn more about Lindsey's work here: https://www.gatheringeffect.com/ Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Becoming a better gatherer w/ Lindsey Caplan

Odds are you’ve seen an article (or 20) about some company somewhere testing out a four-day workweek. And if you’ve scrolled past the story to the comments, you’ve probably spied a few cheers…and plenty of jeers. Punching in five days a week might seem like the natural working order—but it’s less a fixed and unchallengeable fact and more a human-shaped choice we can, you know, shape differently. In this episode, Aaron asks Rodney about lessons learned from her own four-day workweek experiment, how to navigate relationships with coworkers on different schedules, and why a four-day workweek is labor’s next evolutionary leap forward. Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Two thumbs up for the four-day workweek

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, longtime member Sam Spurlin dispenses a step-by-step guide to implementing and scaling effective action meetings, breaks down the best ways to “get people what they need,” and reveals how to keep the action-meeting train chugging along into the future. You can find Sam here: https://www.samspurlin.com/ Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Unsuck your next work meeting w/ Sam Spurlin

It’s a major question on many minds these days: When will the office reopen? Or rather: Will the office reopen? Different countries are in very different stages of heading back to physical workspaces (or not); in the United States, the prospect of on-premise work is inching closer as companies struggle to decide between three main models: fully in-office; fully remote; or…maybe some mix of both? In this episode, we unpack why floppy hybrid models are doomed to fail, different flavors of creativity (that don’t rely on glass-walled conference rooms), and what the most adaptive path forward could look like. Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Can hybrid work...work?

It’s no surprise that we’re fans of self-management, and we talk a lot about its benefits and transformative potential. But sometimes we forget just how much traditional hierarchy is baked into the operating system of our work cultures—and of our personal lives. So when self-management and hierarchy smash into each other, there can be a steep, sometimes uncomfortable learning curve. In this episode, we talk with Michael Y. Lee, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, about how orgs prepare and smartly scaffold for self-management, growing academic research into impactful org design, and how the pandemic presented a unique challenge for his work. Learn more about Michael's work here: https://www.michaelylee.co/bio Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Are you ready for self-management? w/ Michael Y. Lee

Say (or sigh) it with us now: burnout. As a physic state, it can be hard to precisely diagnose but you know it when you see it—and when you feel it. As remote work becomes a larger presence in our lives, it’s more important than ever to recognize why and when we need meaningful breaks. In this episode, we talk to Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation and the newsletter “Culture Study,” about the difference between setting boundaries versus guardrails, LARPing through your job, and what we can do to extinguish burnout. Check out Anne's book here: https://bookshop.org/books/can-t-even-how-millennials-became-the-burnout-generation/9780358315070 Check out Anne's newsletter, Culture Study, here: https://annehelen.substack.com/ Follow Anne here: https://twitter.com/annehelen Apply to work at The Ready: In the United States: http://theready.com/team In Europe: http://theready.com/team Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.com Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Beating burnout w/ Anne Helen Petersen

What’s stopping us from doing the best work of our lives? It’s the way we work. Whether you’re building a startup or reinventing a global enterprise, every day is a battle between chaos and bureaucracy. But, what if there’s a third way? Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans help teams all over the world discover a more adaptive and human way of working. Now it’s your turn. Each week, they’ll bring you a counterintuitive take on a common challenge at work—and you'll hear from guests who have been there and found their way to something better. This isn’t business as usual. This is Brave New Work.

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Brave New Work

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