PODCAST · business
At Work with The Ready
by Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin
Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin have helped teams around the world adopt more modern ways of working and on At Work with The Ready they’re sharing the inside scoop with you, too. Whether you’re struggling with a carousel of ineffective meetings, annual strategy sessions that go nowhere, or decision-making churn that never ceases, they’ve seen it all and are here to help. In each episode, they'll break down common workplace challenges and show you the moves—both big and small—to start making real, lasting change. (Formerly “Brave New Work” with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans)
Episodes
-
58. The One Where Sam Says Goodbye
We've spent the last few months talking about organizations that are built to benefit from change. But change gets extra hard when people leave, especially when that person is your friend and a big part of what makes a job worth getting up for in the morning. It’s hard to balance being happy for...
-
AUA: How to Get Institutional Knowledge Out of People’s Heads
In some organizations, the knowledge isn't in a wiki or a handbook…it’s trapped in people's heads and travels by hallway storytelling. A listener wants to know: how do you build a culture of knowledge sharing and async communication in a place where writing things down has never been the norm? In...
-
57. Your Company Wasn't Built to Grieve with Molly Graham
Organizations are absorbing more change than they were ever built for, and that change always comes with a lot of feelings. Whether it's a layoff, a reorg, a promotion, or handing off a project you built, we're constantly having to shed hopes and dreams and stability and start over. But most...
-
AUA: How To Make the Hard Call and Shut Something Down
Every organization is postponing something painful they don’t want to face. The CEO’s strategy that’s stopped working, the layoffs that have become unavoidable, the promising prototype that’s not delivering results. But even when what has to be done is clear, nobody wants to be the one to be the...
-
56. Your Strategy is a Work of Fiction
Once a year a small group goes offsite, argues for three days, and comes back with a deck. Goals get written. Functions map their OKRs to the slides. Then the market moves, and everybody spends the next eleven months executing against assumptions that stopped being true in February. Most people…
more -
AUA: How Do Leaders Stop Being The Decision Bottleneck?
It happens gradually: a leader makes one call that should have been decided by one of their reports, then another, until the whole team has quietly stopped deciding anything without “checking in” first. By the time the bottleneck is discovered, it feels like just how things are now and any change...
-
55. Your Org Can Be Built to Benefit From Change. Can You?
Most of us were told to find the one thing we're great at and ride it. Build the team around your gaps, get good at your specialty and let someone else cover the rest. That advice built a lot of careers, and it also built a lot of leaders who only have one move, right at the moment when the…
more -
AUA: Why Does Every Decision Take Forever?
Most organizations run on two default modes of deciding: build consensus until everyone's exhausted, or debate until the boss makes the call. Both feel normal and both quietly stall the work, so how do you introduce something better without triggering resistance? In this mini episode, Rodney and...
-
54. Change Only Sticks If It Starts At The Top: Resetting Your Executive Team
Hard truth time: your executive team sets the ceiling on how fast everything below it can move and most of them aren't built for that job. Decisions pile up on the CEO's desk because nobody's clear who owns them. Board prep swallows whole weeks. One person quietly absorbs all the coordination...
-
AUA: Are Ego-Driven Leaders The Only Kind That Succeed?
Sam Altman and Elon Musk built some of the most valuable companies on the planet while doing nearly everything we would advise against. So a listener wants to know: if ego and raw self-belief keep landing people at the top, is all this talk of trust and participation on our show worth it? In this...
-
53. The Chief of Staff’s Real Job: Turning Strategy Into Action
If you hired a chief of staff to be your leadership team’s star athlete, don’t let them languish on the bench. At many organizations, chiefs of staff are meant to execute high-wire strategic work. But the job is often reduced to: glorified project management, executive cat-herding, and catering…
more -
AUA: When Do Well-Meaning Checklists Turn Into Compliance Theater?
Every org has process that started as protection and calcified into performance: boxes we check to prove nothing bad happened, rather than to help good work happen. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener trying to resist the "checklistification" of their org. They draw a line...
-
52. Welcome to the Liminal Space (Buckle Up!)
Volatility is just the new normal, and it's crushed everyone's appetite for complexity at the exact moment complexity demands attention. Executives who used to love a whiteboard now say "just tell me the answer." Five-year plans read as fiction within months. Employees trust leadership less than...
-
AUA: How Do You Tell Leadership The Truth Without Getting Fired?
You can see it clearly: the project is FUBAR, the reporting is rosy, and the people with the power to do something about it are several levels above you. But sending a flare up the chain feels risky—especially when your boss's boss's boss is the one you need to reach. So what do you actually do?…
more -
51. It's Time, Babe: How to Know When to Leave Your Job
Everyone tells you leaving a job is a math problem: runway, comp, the next offer, the spreadsheet that finally tips. But most people who ask "how do I know when it's time?" have already answered the question. They just haven't let themselves hear it yet. In this episode, Rodney and Sam get...
-
AUA: How Do You Make Employee Ownership Actually Feel Real?
Plenty of companies make the move to employee ownership—ESOPs, EOTs, buyouts—and then wonder why nothing really changes. The shares transfer, the announcement goes out, and then... people still feel like employees. The ownership is technically there, but the culture hasn't caught up. In this mini...
-
50. The Ways of Working Movement Failed. Now What?
Fifteen years ago, the future of work seemed inevitable: bureaucracy was crumbling, adaptive organizations were the next default, and a whole movement of practitioners was going to get us there. That future never arrived. Agile transformation offices are being eliminated, the pendulum has swung...
-
AUA: Is Real Change Possible Inside Federal Bureaucracy?
Most of the conversation about the future of work is aimed squarely at the corporate sector—growth engines, dual transformation, quarterly targets. But what if your organization exists to regulate, administer, and serve the public? What if the purpose isn't changing, and innovation of the...
-
Traditional Consulting Sold You a Great Idea. Now What? [Rebroadcast]
Producer's Note: It’s been two years since this episode first aired, and it’s every bit as relevant today. We’ve got some exciting things on these themes coming really soon, so revisit this one and we'll see in two weeks with a brand new episode. --- For decades, traditional consulting (think...
-
AUA: How Honest Should Leaders Be During a Transformation?
Your company announced a shiny new transformation, set to herald a new era of possibility. But a few weeks in, it's starting to feel a lot more like a top-down cost-cutting exercise with a nicer label—and people are afraid that speaking up will put a target on their back. Sound familiar? In this...
-
49. How To Make Big Things Happen At Work
You've built the asset. You've done the comms. You even held office hours (that no one came to). And still…nothing changes. Sound familiar? These moves are still everyone’s go-to plays for substantial transitions in the workplace, even when we have decades of experience that they fall flat. In…
more -
AUA: How To Lead When You Don’t Have The Answers?
The higher up you go, the more everyone expects you to have the answers. Your team wants reassurance about AI. Your peers want to know what other companies are doing. Leadership wants confidence you're not sure you have. But what if the honest answer to most of it is, "I don't know?" and what if...
-
48. Office Politics: The Fun and Frustration of Palace Intrigue
Office politics doesn't happen because people are scheming. It happens because no one wrote anything down. In the absence of clear ways of working, the preferences of the most powerful people fill the vacuum and suddenly half your attention is spent learning whose attachment format to use rather...
-
AUA: How Does HR Rewrite Job Descriptions for AI?
Every HR team is getting the same ask right now: rewrite our job descriptions to reflect AI. It sounds reasonable—until you realize you're being asked to update a document that was already a little broken for a world that's changing faster than any static artifact can keep up with. So where do…
more -
47. The Chaos Tax is Slowing Your Org Down
Everyone talks about slaying bureaucracy and cutting organizational sludge but there's an equally pernicious force that doesn't get nearly enough airtime: the organizational debt created by too little structure. The chaos tax is real, and it's usually being paid by everyone except the person...
-
AUA: What Keeps Teams Together When AI Does The Work?
As AI handles more and more of the actual work, a genuinely hard question emerges: how do you maintain shared purpose when there's no single organization anchoring it? In this mini AUA, Rodney and Sam argue that more automation requires more intentional human connection, not less — and that AI...
-
46. Embracing the Beautiful Mess: How Organizations Actually Work with John Cutler
Most leaders want to believe they're building something durable: a company that matters, a culture that sticks, a system people can rely on. But what if most organizations don't have the staying power of a great city like Venice...and instead are more like a gold rush town? What if that same...
-
AUA: Why Won't The Rest Of The Org Copy What’s Working?
You've done the hard work. Your team cracked the code on a new process/workflow/policy/design, your ways of working are genuinely better, and now...everyone else is actively uninterested. It's infuriating, and also completely predictable. In this mini AUA, Rodney and Sam unpack why good ideas…
more -
45, Part 2. Why Pay Will Never Feel Fair At Work (And It's Not The Money)
Compensation is where human psychology and organizational systems collide—and in Part 1, Rodney and Sam named why it so often turns into a hedonic treadmill: every lever you pull to reduce dissatisfaction tends to raise expectations and create new dissatisfaction. If you haven’t listened to Part…
more -
AUA: Why Is My Small Org So Hard To Run?
Small doesn't mean simple. In fact, smaller organizations are often more complex in the ways that are hardest to manage — personalities loom larger, every conversation carries more weight, and the line between "business problem" and interpersonal drama gets uncomfortably thin. In this mini AUA,...
-
45, Part 1. Why Pay Will Never Feel Fair At Work (And It's Not The Money)
Compensation is one of the messiest parts of any organization. Pay becomes a proxy for belonging, validation, performance, identity, and status… which means it’s almost guaranteed to feel unfair, confusing, and emotionally loaded. Layer on a capitalist “more is always better” mindset, and you get...
-
AUA: What Should L&D Do About AI Right Now?
AI pressure is landing squarely on Learning & Development teams. Execs want “future skills”…yesterday. The tension? How do you stop churning out more courses and start building real capabilities in the age of AI? In this AUA mini episode, Rodney and Sam share the first moves they’d make if they...
-
44. Forget ROI: The Ethical Case for Org Design
Most org design conversations get forced through a narrow funnel: prove the ROI, justify the spend, make the numbers work. But if work is something most people can’t opt out of—and where we spend a huge chunk of our attention and waking lives—then “it pays off” feels like a painfully small...
-
AUA: Can You Change an Org When Leadership Doesn’t See the Problem?
When the people at the center of power feel well-served by the current system, how do you create change? This week’s listener question gets at a frustrating reality: sometimes the OS is optimized for the very people you’d need to convince. The business is growing, shareholders are happy, and the...
-
43. Dual Transformation Is The Future...And Nobody's Prepared
Most organizations are built to do exactly what they do…and that’s the problem. When a core business starts to decay due to disruption, automation, or shifting customer demand, the instinct is to double down on efficiency, cost cutting, and short-term fixes. But that focus often crowds out the...
-
AUA: Can Layoffs Really Reduce Bureaucracy?
While many organizations claim they’re cutting red tape, the underlying drivers often look more like cost pressure, market correction, or AI anxiety dressed up as structural reform. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam unpack the recent wave of layoffs framed as efforts to “reduce…
more -
42. The Top 3 Skills Change Agents Need in 2026
Want to build skills like this to help your team succeed in 2026? Learn about our Capability Catalyst program. Enterprise change is getting harder, not easier—and in 2026, “having the right ideas” isn’t enough to move transformation. You need personal capability that lets you see what’s really...
-
AUA: How To Design a Startup OS From Scratch?
Starting a company with a blank slate sounds like a dream—but it’s also a trap. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener question about how to design an organizational operating system from scratch, without inheriting all the baggage of traditional management. They argue for...
-
41. Why Your AI Strategy Stalled and How To Get Moving with Greg Shove
Enterprise AI adoption is still stuck in the teens and the gap between the hype and the reality is getting harder to ignore. People are finding pockets of productivity, but they’re often keeping the gains to themselves, worried that “using AI well” is just speed-running their way into a layoff....
-
AUA: How Do You Measure the ROI of Org Design?
Leaders often ask for a clear, immediate ROI on org design and transformation work—but that question can derail the conversation before it even starts. When ROI is framed purely as short-term financial return, it misses how organizations actually change and improve over time. In this mini Ask Us...
-
40. Our 2026 Predictions: Expect the Unexpected
As 2025 comes to a close, AI hype is still everywhere, workers are feeling the strain of constant change, and organizations are quietly reorganizing who (or what) does the work. We’re ending the year with some big questions: What happens to the “middle” of organizations? How do humans fit into...
-
AUA: Can Internal Transformation Teams Really Drive Change?
Many people who want to work in organizational change hit the same question: is it better to do this work from inside an organization, or from the outside as a consultant? In this AUA mini episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin respond to a listener who’s considering a career shift into org change...
-
39. Performance Management "Needs Improvement"
Everyone knows performance management is broken—but we keep doing it anyway. Why? For decades, organizations have poured time, money, and emotional energy into performance management—even though almost everyone agrees it’s broken. Annual reviews take hundreds of hours, distort real feedback,...
-
AUA: How Do You Balance Autonomy With Alignment In IT Teams?
Every organization eventually hits the same wall: central teams aren’t responsive enough, federated teams reinvent everything, and the result is a messy tug-of-war between alignment and autonomy. IT organizations feel this pain especially acutely. In this mini Ask Us Anything episode, Rodney…
more -
38. Running Better Experiments at Work
Everyone says they want to “experiment” at work—especially now that AI is reshaping how teams operate—but most organizations still treat change like a project plan: analyze, design, roll out, hope for the best. The result? Fake experiments that are over-controlled and over-planned, or chaotic…
more -
AUA: Your Team Isn't Ready For Your Future
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 Spurlin tackle a listener question about how to lead from the future without alienating your coworkers in the present. They explore what happens when you…
more -
37. Leadership Across Generations with Raven Solomon
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 (economic shifts, social movements, and broken workplace systems) that shape how each generation sees loyalty, ambition, and success. From Boomers to Gen…
more -
AUA: Surviving the Culture Shock of an International Merger
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, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into what really happens when mergers cross not just company lines—but cultures. They unpack the hidden dynamics...
-
36. What AI Is Teaching Us About Ourselves
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 feeling its impact, whether through new tools, shifting expectations, or the quiet panic of not knowing where to start. But most companies are doing what...
-
AUA: How to Change When People Are Loyal To The Past
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 Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin tackle a listener question about navigating change inside legacy systems where authority, tradition, and...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin have helped teams around the world adopt more modern ways of working and on At Work with The Ready they’re sharing the inside scoop with you, too. Whether you’re struggling with a carousel of ineffective meetings, annual strategy sessions that go nowhere, or decision-making churn that never ceases, they’ve seen it all and are here to help. In each episode, they'll break down common workplace challenges and show you the moves—both big and small—to start making real, lasting change. (Formerly “Brave New Work” with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans)
HOSTED BY
Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does At Work with The Ready have?
At Work with The Ready currently has 292 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is At Work with The Ready about?
Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin have helped teams around the world adopt more modern ways of working and on At Work with The Ready they’re sharing the inside scoop with you, too. Whether you’re struggling with a carousel of ineffective meetings, annual strategy sessions that go nowhere, or...
How often does At Work with The Ready release new episodes?
At Work with The Ready publishes regularly with 292 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to At Work with The Ready?
You can listen to At Work with The Ready on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts At Work with The Ready?
At Work with The Ready is created and hosted by Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin.
URL copied to clipboard!