At Work with The Ready

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 ever and with AI in the mix the old moats (talent, pricing, product, position) are eroding or gone.

So what's left? In this episode, Rodney sits down with Sam Rothkopf, co-steward of The Ready, to lay out the firm's new thesis: durable competitive advantage is the ability to execute in complexity, and the organizations that win will be the ones built to benefit from change. They get into why discernment beats endless experimentation, why execution is strategy now, and what it looks like when a company gets it right.

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Mentioned references:

Sam Rothkopf

"stewardship": Miniseries episode

Jon Roth

Sky & Depthfinding

IKEA's AI and virtual design transformation

"Transfo A and Transfo B": AWWTR Ep. 43

"Action Meetings": BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin

00:00 Intro and Check-In: what have you completely changed your mind about?
05:09 The moment: volatility has killed our appetite for complexity
06:39 "Just tell me the answer"
09:30 AI speeds you up, but doesn’t change your direction
12:54 The old playbooks are defunct and leadership trust is at an all time low
17:41 Built to benefit from change is the future
21:42 Experimenting that leads to new outcomes
23:48 Finding your business’ spark
27:16 Example: IKEA finding their spark
30:44 Finding your spark doesn’t have to be a journey
37:04 Where The Ready’s thinking has evolved
38:00 What "execution is strategy" actually means
42:00 Treat volatility as a resource + the transfo A/B conversation
43:34 Sam’s disposition towards change and volatility
47:16 The inner work: creativity needs a grounded self
48:00 Wrap up—Leave us a review

Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coupe Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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?

In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener stuck in that exact spot and offer a few moves that don't involve career-ending emails or anonymous screeds nailed to the CEO's door, and explore whether you can quietly reshape the data story being told upstream in a way that's helpful rather than accusatory.

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Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coupe Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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 personal, both are in the middle of their own transitions, and unpack what it actually takes to leave well. They dig into the difference between the best days, the worst days, and the average day that actually tells you the truth; why your body tends to figure it out long before your brain does; and why leaving of your own volition is often better for your mental health than running out the clock.

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Ready to change your organization? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Let's talk.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Mentioned references:

Sky and Midnight Zones

"layoffs episode": BNW Ep. 152

EOT (Employee-Owned Trust)

"ways of working episode": AWWTR Ep. 50

Dual Transformation: AWWTR Ep. 43

"Gareth": BNW Ep. 5 with Dr. Gareth Holman

FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early)

"10% of Americans don't have enough food"

Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coupe Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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 episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener who's seen this gap firsthand and wants to know which parts of the operating system to examine first. Drawing heavily from The Ready's own experience as an EOT, Rodney and Sam make the case that ownership culture lives in three places most companies underinvest in and why checks and balances between long-term purpose and short-term operations are the structural move that makes distributed power meaningful.

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Mentioned references:

ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan)

EOT (Employee Owned Trust)

The Ready's EOT transition

The Ready's OS Canvas

Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coupe Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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 hard back to command-and-control, and the companies we held up as proof are still the exceptions, not the rule.

This week, Rodney and Sam take an honest look at the failure of the ways of working movement, including their own part in it. They dig into the mismatches that doomed so much of this work and get practical about what still works—because while the movement may have stalled, the moves still matter.

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Ready to change your organization? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Let's talk.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Mentioned references:

Bradlees

Twilight and Sunshine Zone

Buurtzorg

Morning Star: BNW Ep. 54 with Doug Kirkpatrick

Haier

"Bayer under Bill": BNW Ep. 68 with Bill Anderson

Mary Parker Follett

org debt: FOHR Miniseries

action meeting: BNW Ep. 80

strategy stack: AWWTR EP. 2

op rhythm: BNW Ep. 118

00:00 Intro + Check-in: Your first music purchase with your own money?
05:18 The failure of the new ways of working movement
07:54 What we mean by "failure"
11:08 ZIRP, COVID, and the swing back to command-and-control
15:27 What people will buy isn’t actually what they need
17:30 Selling Sunshine Zone products for Twilight Zone work
20:12 Bottoms-up to a fault
25:01 Nobody has capacity to learn anymore
28:11 Tennis vs. golf: the new consulting posture
35:23 Is local change worth it?
38:42 Failure of the movement, not the moves
40:34 Change #1 - Go deeper
42:49 Change #2 - Orient to the outcome
44:47 Change #3 - Branching roadmaps and scenario planning
46:15 Change #4 - Build organizations that benefit from change
49:15 The End

Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Coupe Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.