Work For Humans

Dart Lindsley wanted to publish a book, but agent after agent turned him down despite the quality of his work. Finally, one told him why: he wasn't famous. So he climbed into his attic, threw a blanket over his head, and recorded a podcast episode that his wife and his friend both called terrible. Then he found Jason Ames, who spent hours grilling him about what he actually wanted before agreeing to produce the show. 200 episodes later, Dart and Jason sit down to mark the milestone. In this episode, Dart and Jason discuss the origin story of Work for Humans, the case against solo content, and the unexpected benefits of podcasting.

Jason Ames has produced Work for Humans since it began. He founded Open Circle Ventures, which helps B2B business owners build personal brands through podcasting.

In this episode, Dart and Jason discuss:
- The real reason Dart started a podcast
- Why Dart interviewed his own bibliography
- Why Jason killed Dart's original pitch
- The key to building a brand through podcasting
- Why good values don't survive bad systems
- What fame actually turned out to be worth
- A new home for listener conversations
- And other topics…

Jason Ames has produced Work for Humans since Dart Lindsley started the show and has helped shape its direction from the beginning. He is the founder of Open Circle Ventures, formerly Ninth Path Audio, which helps B2B business owners build personal brands through podcasting. Before podcasting, he worked in music production. Jason has grown a business from about two million to ten million dollars a year in revenue and is currently working on a new startup.

Resources Mentioned:
Work for Humans Community (Discord): https://11fold.com/community
The Experience Economy, by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-B-Joseph-Pine/dp/1665186550
Mass Customization, by B. Joseph Pine II: https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Customization-Frontier-Business-Competition/dp/0875843727
The Transformation Economy, by B. Joseph Pine II: https://www.amazon.com/Transformation-Economy-Guiding-Customers-Aspirations/dp/B0G54DDT25
Scale, by Geoffrey West: https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Growth-Organisms-Companies/dp/014311090X
The Master-Servant Doctrine, by Elizabeth Tippett: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Servant-Doctrine-Legal-Modern-Workplace/dp/0520382315

Connect with Jason:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasontylerames/
Email: jason@opncircle.com 
Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

In her first job out of college, Kim Scott thought managing Russian diamond cutters would be simple: pay them well and the rest follows. It wasn't. They wanted a picnic, and by the end of a bottle of vodka, she understood what they actually wanted: someone who gave a damn. That instinct, respecting the whole person, not just the employee, became the seed of her book, Radical Respect. In this revisited episode, Dart and Kim discuss how leaders mistake authoritarianism and aggression for dominance, and end up turning themselves into workplace jerks instead.

Kim Scott is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect. She cofounded the company Radical Candor, where she co-hosts the podcast, and has coached CEOs at Dropbox, Qualtrics, and Twitter.

In this episode, Dart and Kim discuss:
- Radical Candor mistaken as license to be a jerk
- Aggressive candor vs compassionate candor
- Leveling power to unlock better collaboration
- Optimizing for collaboration instead of coercion
- Why treating employees as commodities backfires
- Bullying vs bias vs prejudice: knowing the difference
- And other topics…

Kim Scott is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect, originally published as Just Work. She cofounded the company Radical Candor, where she co-hosts the podcast, and has been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, and Twitter. She led teams at Google and Apple, and holds a bachelor's from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard.

Resources Mentioned:
Kim's Book, Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Humanity/dp/1250103509
Kim's Book, Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Respect-Work-Together-Better/dp/1250623766
Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes, by Margaret Heffernan: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Measure-Impact-Small-Changes/dp/1442381647
The Core Value Equation, by Darius Mirshahzadeh: https://www.amazon.com/Core-Value-Equation-Framework-Limitless/dp/1544506708
Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, by Maureen Ryan: https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Down-Complicity-Change-Hollywood/dp/0063269279
The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, by Robert I. Sutton: https://www.amazon.com/No-Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace/dp/0446698202
Finding Me, by Viola Davis: https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Me-Memoir-Viola-Davis/dp/0063037327
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002

Connect with Kim:
https://www.radicalcandor.com/
https://radicalrespectbook.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimm4/
Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

James Seechurn spent over a decade building compensation programs on a simple premise: design the incentive right, and you'll get the behavior you want. But his first clue that this was wrong came from watching it fail on him. As a young accountant on billable hours, slowing down to actually understand something cost him money. He kept redesigning bonus plans for clients anyway, until the pattern became impossible to ignore: paid people don't do better work, they just do whatever gets measured. 

In this episode, Dart and James explore what we're actually buying when we pay someone, why pay-for-performance is really a form of control, and the false stories we tell ourselves about why people work.
James Seechurn is an independent rewards advisor and the author of What Pay Costs, Nothing Left to Take Away, and Close the Gap. 
In this episode, Dart and James discuss:
- What you're really buying when you pay someone
- The cobra bounty that backfired
- Why performance reviews grade the wrong person
- Turning billable hours into a currency
- Why quality is mostly the system, not the person
- The company that let workers vote out their bosses
- Why Semco sold itself back to its own people
- Why pay-for-performance is really about control
- Why companies rarely last past 15 years
- And other topics…

James A. Seechurn is an independent rewards advisor with 20 years of experience in sales compensation and broad-based pay, including a decade at Aon's Rewards Solutions practice. A Fellow Chartered Accountant, he is the author of What Pay Costs, Nothing Left to Take Away, and Close the Gap. He hosts the Disengaged podcast.

Resources Mentioned:
James's Book, What Pay Costs: The Science of Pay, Incentives, Bonuses, Salaries, Equity Compensation, Motivation, and Performance:https://www.amazon.com/What-Pay-Costs-Compensation-Performance/dp/B0FV3VPXWW
James's Podcast, Disengaged: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/disengaged/id1874104719 
Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace, by Ricardo Semler: https://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0446516961
Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini: https://www.amazon.com/Humanocracy-Creating-Organizations-Amazing-People/dp/1633696022
Barry Schwartz on Work for Humans: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tragic-state-of-work-in-america-barry-schwartz/id1612743401?i=1000577078192
Geoffrey West on Work for Humans: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-problem-with-scale-what-growing-too-big-does-to/id1612743401?i=1000749058561
Gary Hamel on Work for Humans: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bureaucracy-is-killing-our-organizations-gary-hamel/id1612743401?i=1000577070311

Connect with James:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-seechurn/
Website: https://www.jamesseechurn.com/
Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

In robotic surgery, a device good enough to let the surgeon operate alone makes the resident, the future expert, optional. Matt Beane saw this pattern everywhere technology gets smart enough to make the apprentice unnecessary. Dart calls this one of the episodes he keeps returning to, for how clearly Matt names one of AI's biggest threats to how we learn. In this revisited episode, Dart and Matt explore how technology reshapes workplace learning, whether tech shapes us or we shape it, and the difference between knowing something and being able to do it.

Matt Beane is an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara and the CEO and cofounder of SkillBench. He is the author of The Skill Code, and his TED talk on the subject has nearly two million views.
In this episode, Dart and Matt discuss:
- How tech reshapes workplace learning
- What technology management programs actually study
- Does tech shape us, or do we shape it?
- Using tech to build skill at scale
- Knowledge vs skill: what's the difference?
- Why skill development breaks down in tech-heavy jobs
- Using positive deviance to grow at work
- How human capital drives productivity
- And other topics…

Matt Beane is an associate professor in the Technology Management Program at UC Santa Barbara and the CEO and cofounder of SkillBench, a company building tools to help organizations develop skills alongside AI. He is a Digital Fellow with Stanford's Digital Economy Lab and MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy.

He holds a PhD and a master's in management research from MIT's Sloan School of Management. His research on robotic surgery has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, and Organization Science. And his TED talk on the subject has nearly two million views. He is the author of The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines.

Resources Mentioned:
Matt's Book, The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines: https://www.amazon.com/Skill-Code-Human-Ability-Intelligent/dp/0063265956
How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand: https://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966
Connect with Matt:
Website: https://www.mattbeane.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-beane-3947271/
Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Under John Chambers, Cisco grew from $70 million to $47 billion, completed 180 acquisitions, and became the most valuable company in the world. He built the company on one idea: employees aren't employees, they're family. Then the dot-com crash hit, and John had to lay off 7,854 people, almost all of whom he'd hired himself. He calls it his worst year as a leader. In this episode, Dart and John explore why John calls employees family, how John builds a leadership team, and why playbooks create speed instead of bureaucracy.

John Chambers led Cisco as CEO from 1995 to 2015 and as Executive Chairman until 2017, and now holds the title of Chairman Emeritus. He is also the author of Connecting the Dots.

In this episode, Dart and John discuss:
- What are companies for?
- Why John calls his employees family
- How Cisco kept attrition under 5% for 25 years
- Competing hard without turning ruthless
- The three questions Cisco asked before every acquisition
- Why John hates the word hierarchy
- Laying off 7,854 people he'd helped hire
- Why playbooks create speed, not bureaucracy
- The little girl who changed how John talks about dyslexia
- And other topics…

John Chambers is the founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures, which he launched in 2018 to invest in and mentor startups navigating major market transitions. He joined Cisco in 1991 as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Operations, served as President and CEO from 1995 to 2015, and as Executive Chairman until 2017, helping grow the company from $70 million to $47 billion in revenue through 180 acquisitions. He now holds the title of Chairman Emeritus at Cisco. He is the author of Connecting the Dots: Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World and the host of the podcast Chambers Talks.

Resources Mentioned:
John's Book, Connecting the Dots: Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World: https://www.amazon.com/Connecting-Dots-Lessons-Leadership-Startup/dp/031648654X
John's Podcast, Chambers Talks: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chambers-talks-a-podcast-series-with-john-chambers/id1542075631

Connect with John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnchambersjc/
JC2 Ventures: https://www.jc2ventures.com/
Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.