Work as a Product with Dart Lindsley

In this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Dart Lindsley - founder of 11Fold, host of the Work for Humans podcast, and former head of business architecture for HR at Cisco Systems - to dig into the idea of work as a product.Dart's core argument: companies have spent a century misclassifying their workforce. Employees fit the definition of customers, people who choose every day whether to keep buying the product called "your job." That reframe rearranges almost everything downstream - recruitment, onboarding, what managers do, how work gets allocated, and what good performance even means.What we covered:The category error at the root of modern management, and why scientific management's framing of people as factors of production still shapes practice todayHow employees fit the definition of customers in a multi-sided business, and the route Dart took to that model through business architecture work at CiscoThe limits of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as a design framework, and what Dart found after asking thousands of people what job they hire their work to doNegative transformation - the ways work changes us into people we don't want to be - and why that belongs on the cost side of the ledgerWhat it looks like when teams co-design their own work, including the four-dimensional bubble chart Dart uses to reallocate tasks based on what each person finds rewardingManagers as brokers optimizing flow between two customers, the paying customer and the working customerCommon pushback on the model: does it scale, is it anti-capitalist, and why bother if the existing system seems to workPlus a short detour into the night Dart climbed the Golden Gate BridgePeople referencedDart Lindsley - founder of 11Fold, host of Work for HumansEdward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theoryClayton Christensen and Bobby Moesta - Jobs to Be Done frameworkJoe Pine - experience and transformation economiesDaniel Pink - autonomy, mastery, purposeAlfie Kohn - critique of behaviorist management ("pop behaviorism")Antonio Damasio - on emotion and reason in decision-makingJeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton - the knowing-doing gapRicardo Semler - Semco's participative modelBart Houlahan - co-founder of B Lab, partner at Irrational CapitalSandra Loughlin - EPAM, on data architecture and AISemmelweis, Pasteur, Koch, Lister - the germ theory paradigm shift, used as analogy for how slowly new management ideas spreadBooksSelf-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness - Richard Ryan and Edward DeciThe Transformation Economy - Joe PineDescartes' Error - Antonio DamasioThe Knowing-Doing Gap - Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert SuttonDrive - Daniel PinkPunished by Rewards - Alfie KohnPodcasts and websitesWork for Humans - Dart's podcast, 190+ episodes11fold.com - 11Fold's site, including a curated Discord community and an AI search across the Work for Humans back cataloguePX Espresso - Luke O'Mahoney's podcast, where Dart appears as a guestIrrational Capital - the ETF Dart references that tracks how employees feel about work at the companies they invest inAeroPress - the world's best coffee makerConnect with Dart on LinkedIn