At Work with The Ready

Why does it always feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get work done? How did we come to see time as a resource we could manipulate and exploit? Why does achieving “inbox zero” come with bragging rights? And how has the belief that we can command and control time totally warped not only our personal lives, but also our working lives? In today's episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans start to tease apart a few of the brain-expanding questions with guest Oliver Burkeman, the best-selling author of Four Thousand Weeks. Together, they explore what we don’t talk about when we talk about modern time management.Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Team dynamics can be tricky, especially with larger groups. Discover the magic of smaller, interdependent teams that foster trust and collaboration. Learn how to avoid pitfalls like groupthink while embracing a flexible structure in a hybrid work world. Funny stories about singing in cars add humor to the serious art of team design. Plus, insights from sports and tarot reveal the sweet spot for team size, helping you create an impactful, purpose-driven environment. Get ready to rethink how you size up your team!

The Covid-19 pandemic marked a sea change in how most people think about work. The mind-numbing norms and deeply-rooted inequities that defined our day-to-day working lives were upended, exposed, and called out for being (let’s face it) what they’ve been all along: rigid, harmful, unacceptable, and unproductive. The good news: Many companies are acknowledging that how we work needs major upgrades—ones that enable real autonomy and flexibility.Of course, wanting a flexible work strategy and designing one that works for your organization are two different things. That’s why Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans teamed up with Brian Elliott and Sheela Subramanian—the Executive Leader and Vice President, respectively, of Slack’s Future Forum think tank—for this very special episode of Brave New Work. Together with Helen Kupp, Brian and Sheela co-wrote the new book How the Future Works, a step-by-step guide on building a flexible, inclusive, and digital-first workplace. We jam with them on the fundamental bedrock elements teams need to transform and weave future-of-work practices into their present-day lives.Link to Sheela, Brian, and Helen Kupp's book, "How The Future Works": https://futureforum.com/how-the-future-works/Slack's Future Forum: https://futureforum.com/Sheela Subramanian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheelasubramanian/Brian Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/belliott/Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Dive into the intriguing parallels between creativity in music, gaming, and organizational design. Learn how improvisation fuels adaptability in unpredictable environments. The hosts share personal stories that reveal instincts in high-pressure situations and the importance of teamwork. Discover how past experiences shape current performance, and why embracing complexity with playfulness fosters innovation. Ultimately, trust and communication are the keys to thriving both in collaborative gaming and dynamic workplaces.

New Belgium Brewing company has been making great beer for decades. It also decided right from the jump to design a company OS that places its people smack-dab at the center of things. That core, human-powered philosophy has driven the wildly popular craft brewer’s business practices for more than 30 years. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak to New Belgium Brewing’s CEO, Steve Fechheimer, about what those practices look like on the ground; how the company adapted, pivoted, and became even more nimble during the pandemic; and why New Belgium Brewing is still on a mission to show that a human-powered business can be a better and more successful one. Hey, we’ll drink to that.Learn more about Steve and his work here: https://www.newbelgium.com/Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Dive into the fascinating world of self-management where enjoyment meets achievement. The hosts explore the balance between personal joy and organizational responsibilities. They discuss disruptive coaching in basketball, drawing parallels to reevaluating traditional roles in various fields. Insights into personality traits highlight their evolutionary significance, while the conversation emphasizes the importance of consent and effective communication in team dynamics. Join in for a transformative take on navigating modern work environments!

This is the eleventh episode in a crossover mini-series between Brave New Work cohosts Rodney Evans and Aaron Dignan and Chase Chapman, builder of DAOs and host of the On the Other Side podcast. Each episode dives into a specific topic related to organizational design for Web3.Today, they talk about the strategic benefits of operating with greater role clarity, when codifying roles makes the most sense, and the teachable set of skills that help anyone with any role thrive in self-management.

This is the tenth episode in a crossover mini-series between Brave New Work cohosts Rodney Evans and Aaron Dignan and Chase Chapman, builder of DAOs and host of the On the Other Side podcast. Each episode dives into a specific topic related to organizational design for Web3.Today, they talk about hiring strategies that aren’t reliant on hoarding power, striking a balance between org-wide participation and circle-run process, and filtering for skills rather than experience to bake more equity into hiring.

The past two-plus years have been defined by uncertainty and upheaval—so it’s safe to say that we’ve been having some feels. Specifically, big feelings—feelings like anger, despair, and burnout, all of which are often pegged as “negative” or “bad.” We tell ourselves lots of stories about these emotions: that we should be strong enough to override them; that our feelings are more intense than others’; and that they have individual (versus structural) solutions. But in the new book Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, co-authors Mollie West Duffy and Liz Fosslien rewrite that narrative. According to them, the more we can name and understand our toughest emotions, the more we can use them to fuel larger-scale transformation. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans chat with Mollie about why becoming more feelings fluent in the workplace is critical for realizing a more human future of work.Order Mollie and Liz's book here: https://bookshop.org/books/big-feelings-how-to-be-okay-when-things-are-not-okay/9780593418239Learn more about Mollie's work here: https://molliewestduffy.com/Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

[Rebroadcast note: This episode originally aired in August 2021.] Odds are you’ve seen an article (or 20) about some company somewhere testing out a four-day workweek. And if you’ve scrolled past the story to the comments, you’ve probably spied a few cheers…and plenty of jeers. Punching in five days a week might seem like the natural working order—but it’s less a fixed and unchallengeable fact and more a human-shaped choice we can, you know, shape differently. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan asks Rodney Evans about lessons learned from her own four-day workweek experiment, how to navigate relationships with coworkers on different schedules, and why a four-day workweek is labor’s next evolutionary leap forward.Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com