At Work with The Ready

39. Performance Management "Needs Improvement"

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows performance management is broken—but we keep doing it anyway. Why? For decades, organizations have poured time, money, and emotion...

AUA: How Do You Balance Autonomy With Alignment In IT Teams?

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every organization eventually hits the same wall: central teams aren’t responsive enough, federated teams reinvent everything, and the result is a m...

38. Running Better Experiments at Work

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Get the Experiment Proposal Template mentioned in this episode. Everyone says they want to “experiment” at work—especially now that AI is res...

AUA: Your Team Isn't Ready For Your Future

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do you bring people along when you’re already living in the future? In this mini episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spur...

37. Leadership Across Generations with Raven Solomon

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s easy to blame “kids these days” when generational tension flares up at work. But beneath the eye rolls and stereotypes are deeper forces (e...

AUA: Surviving the Culture Shock of an International Merger

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when your small European company gets acquired by a massive American one? In this mini Ask Us Anything episode of At Work with The Ready...

36. What AI Is Teaching Us About Ourselves

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Get the AI Coffee Club toolkit to start one at your own organization: Download here! AI isn’t coming—it’s here. Every organization is already...

AUA: How to Change When People Are Loyal To The Past

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do you change the way work happens when everyone agrees on what to do—but no one wants to change how it’s done? In this mini episode of At ...

35. Fighting Burnout At Work

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Burnout has become the quiet epidemic of modern work. We tell people to “set better boundaries” or “take more time off,” but the real problem ...

AUA: Promotion Problems - Managing Former Bosses

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when your promotion puts you in charge of your former boss? In this mini Ask Us Anything episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evan...

34. Even More Bad Bosses and How to Defeat Them, P2

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every worker has a bad boss story—but why are they so common? In this two-part series, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into the archetypes of dysfu...

AUA: Why 360 Feedback Breaks Down in Leadership Teams

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’re trying something new: mini Ask Us Anything episodes! Instead of waiting for our quarterly Q&A roundups, we’ll drop shorter conversations int...

34. Bad Bosses and How to Defeat Them, Part 1

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every worker has a bad boss story—but why are they so common? In this two-parter, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into the archetypes of dysfunctio...

From Our Friends | The Rewards of Healthy Conflict with Master Fixer Amanda Ripley - Fixable

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Producer Note: Hey there! We’re on vacation this week, but we didn’t want to leave your feed empty. Some of our most popular conversations this pa...

33. What’s Your Type? The Enneagram at Work with Liz Orr

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us think we know ourselves (and the people we work with) pretty well. But when tensions rise, deadlines loom, or feedback lands wrong, the tru...

32. Why Mergers and Acquisitions Fail (Almost Every Time)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In most companies, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is treated like a finish line. But the truth is, signing the deal is just the start—and if you hav...

31. Why Reorgs Don't Work

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s reorg season…again. And for many companies, it always is. Every 12 to 18 months, another wave of layoffs, leadership swaps, and org chart red...

30. Extended Leadership Teams: Set Up to Fail Yet Expected to Lead

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The extended leadership team (those just below the C-suite) often finds itself stuck between translating strategy and triaging dysfunction. They’re ...

29. Working from Anywhere with Raj Choudhury

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For years, the conversation around remote work has been stuck in binary debates. Home vs. office? Productivity vs. flexibility? Control vs. chaos? But...

28. DIY or DOA? Why Org Change Needs Outside Help

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a year marked by tighter budgets, leaner teams, and growing uncertainty, more organizations than ever are choosing to go it alone. DIY transformati...

27. Everything Can't Be Priority One

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We talk a lot about doing less to get more—but in practice, most organizations end up doing the opposite. When priorities pile up, and nothing gets ...

26. Unweirding Change with Michael Bungay Stanier

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite an explosion of frameworks, toolkits, and “best practices,” the success rate of organizational change hasn’t improved in over a decade. ...

Depthfinding: Putting It All Into Practice

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Depthfinding: From Leadership to Stewardship

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Depthfinding: Making Sense of This Moment

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Brave New Work: Making Layoffs More Human [Rebroadcast]

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rebroadcast note: With everything happening in the world right now, we're taking a quick break from our miniseries to reshare this episode about layof...

Depthfinding: The Midnight Zone - Experience, Emotions, and Reactions at Work

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Depthfinding: Twilight Zone - Where Work Happens

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Depthfinding: Sunshine Zone - Artifacts, Org Charts, and Metrics

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Depthfinding: Sky - Threats and Opportunities

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, we’re exploring Depthfinding—an easy-to-grasp framework designed to help leaders and teams solve their gnarliest cross-functio...

Depthfinding: Solve Your Cross-Functional Problems…Finally!

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last decade at The Ready, we’ve seen firsthand that the most significant organizational challenges are nearly all cross-functional. But mos...

25. 1M Downloads and Counting: Looking Back on 2024

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

2024 felt like a bit of a rollercoaster—and while we’re ready to close the book on this year, we wouldn’t be first-class org designers if we pas...

The Future of HR: Giving HRBPs the Future-of-Work Makeover They Deserve [Rebroadcast]

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rebroadcast note: We're hard at work recording a brand new miniseries for January, so this week we're resharing one this episode from our Future of HR...

24. Ask Us Anything No. 3

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s mailbag time! And while we know we said this last time, we really mean it that this was probably the hardest group of questions we’ve dealt w...

23. Adopting a Product Mindset in Organizations

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are plenty of organizations that say they want to be “customer-focused”—but in practice? It’s easy to fall back on leader-driven opinion...

22. Founder Mode vs. Manager Mode is the Wrong Question

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve been on LinkedIn this past month, you’ve likely seen at least one post (or more than you’d care to) about “founder mode.” Present...

21. From Control to Trust: The People Positivity Journey

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last nine years, The Ready has seen firsthand how organizations designed to be people positive (a.k.a. a foundational belief that people are ...

20. Psychological Safety Starts With Your Leadership Team

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Psychological safety is a buzzy topic every company claims to want—but only a handful actually achieve. Sometimes, it’s misunderstood as being abo...

19. All The Small Things: The Power of Good Habits

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While exploring bad meetings a few episodes ago, Rodney and Sam hit on something that doesn’t often get a lot of air time: the power of good habits ...

18. If You Won’t Make Changes, That Employee Engagement Survey Is a Waste of Time

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

No burying the lede this week: Employee engagement surveys are broken. We expect them to tell us everything about a workplace’s culture—but they...

17. Making Meaningful Progress with Dr. Jason Fox

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We talk a lot about the importance of emergence—of being more comfortable with being uncomfortable. However, it’s hard to practice what you preach...

16. Ask Us Anything No. 2: You Asked, We Answered

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s mailbag time! We’ve been diving into specific problem areas every episode—and turns out if you go deep, your audience will go even deeper. ...

15. This Workshop Could Have Been A Meeting

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Planning a corporate workshop or off-site often feels like making a burrito. So many options—and so many opinions on what should go in it. A present...

14. Surviving the Summertime Slump

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s an unspoken truth in most knowledge work that summer is a wasted season. From late May to early September, many teams face reduced numbers and ...

13. Leadership Teams of the Future Act Like Org Designers

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The world is changing faster than ever. But leadership teams seem a little… stagnant. Sure, there’s plenty of changeover as one CEO is replaced by...

12. Breaking the Cycle of Meeting-ocrity

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It seems everybody’s up in arms about meetings these days. “There’s too many! They ones we have suck! We have meetings to prepare for other meet...

11. The Ones Who Care The Most Will Leave You First

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the nearly five years since launching this podcast, our inbox has received one type of question more than any other: “If I’m trying to change a...

10. RACI is The Wrong Answer To The Right Question

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The RACI matrix (as well its cousins DACI, DARCI, etc.) aims to neatly categorize stakeholders into roles—who’s responsible, accountable, consulte...

9. Ask Us Anything No. 1: You Asked, We Answered

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

“Ask Us Anything” episodes were a Brave New Work tradition, and we knew they were going to live on in this next new chapter of the show. What we d...

8. Traditional Consulting Sold You a Great Idea. Now What?

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, traditional consulting (think “management” or “strategy” varieties now synonymous with the Big Three) has been a go-to move for o...

7. Sync or Swim: Riding the Waves of Async Work

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

6. If You're Faking It, You Won't Make It

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every time something changes at work, someone’s bound to be upset. Digital transformations take resources from analog teams; restructuring a departm...

5. Silos Are For Corn, Not For People

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 wo...

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

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

3. How 1:1 Meetings Are Messing Up Your Culture

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 me...

2. Your PowerPoint Deck Is Not a Strategy

22 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's January! New beginnings? Ambitious plans? Giant commitments to change? They’re on everyone’s mind. Companies included—since now’s the tim...

163/1. A Brave New Chapter

08 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 di...

The Future of HR: The End Is Just the Beginning

30 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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. T...

The Future of HR: Creating Irresistible Workplaces with Josh Bersin

23 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

The Future of HR: AUA Confidential Edition

16 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“Ask Us Anything” episodes are some of the most fun to make, so we knew we had to include one in our Future of HR miniseries. In the spirit of a w...

The Future of HR: Slaying Your Company’s Org Debt Monster

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Spooky season is here, so it seems fitting to share a horror story. Because there’s a monster draining time and energy from most of our organization...

The Future of HR: HR’s Data Dilemma and Breaking Free of the Status Quo with Brian Elliott

02 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’re living in a data-rich time. Searching for a study or report on, say, the benefits of a three-day return-to-office policy? You’re mere clicks...

The Future of HR: Finding a Third Way with AI Through The Noise, Part 2

25 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Was it ever possible for our first AI episode to not be a two-parter? Probably not. So we’re back today with more thoughts on AI and the Future of H...

The Future of HR: Finding a Third Way with AI Through The Noise, Part 1

18 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One midnight scroll through LinkedIn is all it takes to be overwhelmed with AI stories and hot takes. There’s a massive amount of confusion, apprehe...

The Future of HR: Putting the “Change” Back in Change Agents and Building Your HR Talent Marketplace

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: A company hires a change agent (think anyone with “org effectiveness,” “change management,” or “s...

The Future of HR: Why Being CPO Is Just the Hardest with Hebba Youssef

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since last fall, we’ve spoken/joked/laughed/cried with hundreds of HR leaders and change makers about the Future of HR and the industry’s evolutio...

The Future of HR: Giving HRBPs the Future-of-Work Makeover They Deserve

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The role of HR Business Partner is often a tale of two experiences. On the one hand, HRBPs are some of the most empathetic and passionate people you’...

The Future of HR: Building Your Capabilities Pt. 2 - From Levels 3 to 5...And Beyond!

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this miniseries, Brave New Work’s Rodney Evans is joined by friend-of-the-pod and Ready OG Sam Spurlin to dive into how HR can become more resili...

The Future of HR: Building Your Capabilities, Pt. 1 - Getting to Level 3

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After decades of dealing with stagnant practices, burnout, and competing agendas, HR might be tempted to trade in the old family minivan for a flashy ...

The Future of HR: Convincing Your Coworkers and the C-Suite

24 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the toughest work tasks? Convince someone else to back your idea. And if you’re in HR, it’s exceptionally tough to get buy-in from other fu...

The Future of HR: Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

17 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s no secret things haven’t been working in HR for… a while. When you include the last few years of navigating a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, ...

We’re Taking a Brave New Break [Bonus]

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Has it really been almost three and a half years since this wild ride of a podcast began? We’ve been experimenting as we go (remember Rodney’s NPR...

Our Hosts in the Wild - The Anxious Achiever: Why Giving Up Control at Work can Improve Your Emotional Health

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

162. Live from SXSW: Busting Workplace Myths with Brian Elliott

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You didn’t think we’d do our first-ever Brave New Work live show and let you miss the party, did you? That’s right, we’re coming in hot with a...

Can Hybrid Work....Work? [Rebroadcast]

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rebroadcast Note: We’re still sleeping off a taco- and margarita-filled weekend at SXSW, so we’re resurfacing one of our most popular episodes tod...

Brave New Work 101 [Rebroadcast]

06 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rebroadcast Note: Some things never go out of style, which is why we resurface this foundational episode year after year. Plus, our BNW community has ...

161. Going to the Talent Marketplace: Part 2

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’re back with part two of our conversation about talent marketplaces. Last week, Rodney and Aaron explored what talent marketplaces are and the ty...

160. Going to the Talent Marketplace: Part 1

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve probably talked about the classic, old-school, hierarchical org chart hundreds of times on the show. Not because we love it (longtime Brave Ne...

159: Help Me Help You: What If Your Coworkers Came with Instructions?

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve all been there: trying to suss out what a colleague’s crossed arms meant during a presentation; reading between the lines on a passive-aggre...

158. Creating Your Digital Workplace Culture with Kelsey Stevenson

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Whether your company is fully remote, fully in-person, or somewhere in-between, work in 2023 (and beyond) will require healthy and robust digital ecos...

157. AUA No. 7: Workplace Rituals, Obstructive Leaders, and Tooling Transitions

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why are “Ask Us Anything” episodes our favorite ones to make? Because our listener questions are never not inspiring, provocative, moving, sharp…...

156. 🙌 ❤️ 🚀 🐙: Putting Emojis to Work at Work

23 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

155. Why Are Job Interviews Such a Hot Mess?

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

154. Yes to Trust, No to Bureaucratic Theater: 2023 Work Trends with Sheela Subramanian

09 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 indus...

New Look. New Course. Same Hot Takes [Bonus]

02 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

See Ya Later, 2022 [Bonus]

26 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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, yo...

153. Becoming a Good Influence with Zoe Chance

19 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 a...

Brave New Work 152. Making Layoffs More Human

12 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 w...

151. Understanding Our Power at Work with Larissa Conte

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Power.” It’s a loaded word that can conjure up feelings of negativity, fear, and general ickiness. And with good reason. If our default definit...

Our Hosts in the Wild: Human Capital Innovations: Adaptive Organization Design and the Future of Work, with Rodney Evans

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

150. Giving Our Feedback Some Feedback

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

149. How To Build a Brand New Team

14 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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—...

148. Building a Digital HQ with Slack's Ali Rayl

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Spoiler alert: Your organization already has a Digital HQ. Because whether you’re back in an office Monday through Friday or working remotely in y...

147. Another Trip to the Mailbag

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 ba...

146. Thinking Outside the Ballot Box with Emily Amick

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We often talk about complexity and work, but complexity is everywhere: at our schools, sports teams, churches, families… you get the idea. Today, we...

145. Shhh....We're Talking About Quiet Quitting

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Odds are you’ve discussed quiet quitting with your colleagues, your friends, your barista, your aunt Barbara… you get the idea. Super-hyped-up con...

Kick Your Company Retreat Up a Notch [Rebroadcast]

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

[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, ha...

144. Wake Up and Smell the OS Coffee

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

143. How To Think Well at Work with David Rock

26 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

How Patagonia Became Patagonia with Vincent Stanley [Rebroadcast]

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

[Rebreoadcast note: This episode originally aired in September 2021.] Patagonia’s purpose is clear: It’s in business to save our home planet. And ...