The most common question we hear is, "What can I do if I'm not the one in charge?" So many of us—including leaders and managers—want to eradicate bureaucracy. But, we're not the head honcho.In this episode on Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about the simple moves anyone can make to start moving toward a better way of working. Because we have a lot more authority than we think we do. And the power we don't have can be enlisted.Later, they're joined by Sarah Devereaux from Google, who shares what she's learned about sparking change after more than fourteen years inside Google.Learn more about Sarah on LinkedIn.Mentioned Resources:Episode 8 of Brave New Work feat. David MarquetOur book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your guest ideas and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

The Ready has a habit of disrupting the established way of doing things, but we've never really looked at our hiring process... until now. In the last few months, we've radically overhauled the way we making hiring decisions by asking questions like, "Can we design a process that reduces bias and homogeny? Can we design a process that focuses on what we want rather than what we don't?"In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about the inner workings of The Ready's new system, the rationale behind it, and what early results are telling us about the work ahead to make it better. Later, they're joined by Kate Glazebrook, cofounder of Applied, who deepens our understanding of the biases and cognitive gymnastics inherent in hiring, while making us feel a little better about our struggles thus far. If you make hiring decisions, this one is a must.Learn more about Kate on LinkedIn and Twitter.Learn more about Be Applied and their approach at their website.Mentioned Resources: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Iris Bohnet, author of What Works: Gender Equality by Design Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your guest ideas and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Are you open to some feedback? Gulp. That one word is enough to send most of us packing. Why? Because we've endured far too many "conversations" that were infrequent, impersonal, critical, and one-sided. But, is it possible to do feedback right? In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about three different waves of feedback at work, and why it's so critical to question our assumptions and reinvent this pervasive practice. Later, they’re joined by Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, who teaches us how to balance caring personally and challenging directly.Learn more about Kim on her website, LinkedIn or Twitter.Learn More about Kim's book, Radical Candor, on the web and on Youtube.Resources mentioned: "Ego and identity" - Episode 5 of our podcast! 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Warner Klemp Lie 5: People Need Feedback by Marcus Buckingham The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz 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

Any podcast that promotes busting bureaucracy and hobbling hierarchy is bound to stir up some questions. That's why this week we're going to let our listeners Ask Us Anything.For this episode, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans took to Twitter and the Brave New Work Wednesdays newsletter to find out what you're wondering about. And you came through big time. We plan on doing this every twelve weeks or so from here on out, so if you ever feel a question percolating as you're listening, just drop us a line at podcast@theready.comResources mentioned: The Peter principle Essentialism by Greg McKeown Organize for Complexity by Niels Pflaeging The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting by Steve Morlidge Drive by Dan Pink Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B Rosenberg Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson We the People by John Buck and Sharon Villines Many Voices One Song by Ted J Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez Unboss by Lars Kolind and Jacob Bøtter 9 Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham John Cutler's Twitter account 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

Doug Seacrist, expert in self-managing teams, shares the journey of reinventing technology support in a restaurant system. Topics include challenges of self-management, SLAM teams, and transitioning to a new way of operating. Insightful advice for leaders on creating self-managing teams and achieving excellence.

We all know that faster learning loops are critical to success in complexity. Yet, we rarely (if ever) take the time to practice one of the most powerful learning moves in the game: the retrospective.In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about the power of reflection—for the individual, team, and organization—and why we can't keep charging ahead without looking back. Later, they're joined by Parabol founder and CEO Jordan Husney, who shares what he’s learned hosting tens of thousands of retrospectives on their platform, including this gem: ”The only wrong way to have a retrospective is to not have one at all.”Learn more about Jordan on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Medium.Learn more about Parabol on their website.Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your guest ideas and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

When starting something new, most of us tend to research, analyze, plan, and procrastinate. Because we don't want to fail. We don't want to be exposed as imposters. And we don't want to take big risks. But in novel and complex spaces, that strategy doesn't help, it only slows us down without increasing our odds. Instead, we need to start by starting and learn by doing so that our ideas can make contact with reality as soon as possible. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans explore how to get on with it—by starting small and working iteratively—so that more good things make it out into the world. And speaking of good things, later they're are joined by Ben Kaufman, founder and CEO of the revolutionary toy store CAMP, who shares why he feels compelled to start impossible projects, and how he rushes in before all the reasons he shouldn't overwhelm him.Learn more about Ben on LinkedIn and Twitter.Learn more about CAMP at their website.Resources mentioned:-"The Marshmallow Test" from Tom Wujec's 2010 TedTalk "Build a tower, build a team":------------------------------------Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your guest ideas and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

Leading a team through change is hard, but leading a team to a place without traditional leadership is far harder. If you ask people to step up... will they do it? And can you really mandate self-management? In this episode of Brave New Work, we talk about what it takes to realize a new way of working within a team or organization, and why that's so hard for—and so dependent on—those of us in charge. Later, they're're joined by former submarine commander David Marquet, author of Turn The Ship Around! and Leadership Is Language, who talks to us about the power of stepping back, the way language shapes the workplace, and how to create a "can think" (and do) culture.Learn more about David and his books on his website, LinkedIn, and Twitter.Resources mentioned: Setting The Table by Danny Meyer ("the salt shaker") Getting Past No by William Ury ("the balcony") ----------------------Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your guest ideas and feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

A diverse team doing important work is bound to disagree. But they’re also likely to avoid talking about it—because conflict makes many of us deeply uncomfortable. But, what if we simply lack the skills to do it well? In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about why disagreement is so hard, what healthy disagreement looks and feels like, and why it’s so critical to success in complexity. Later, they’re joined by Buster Benson, author of Why Are We Yelling, who teaches us how to have disagreements so productive we might actually seek them out and enjoy them.Learn more about Buster on his website, on Linkedin, or on Mastadon.Learn more about Buster's book Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement--------------------Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

In a complex and dynamic world, sharing information on a "need to know" basis is misguided, because it perpetuates ignorance and bias. No one needs to know everything all the time, but we need the right (and the ability) to find what we need when we need it. And while many teams and organizations are coming around to the principle of transparency, when it comes to sharing more sensitive data—like compensation—many people freak out and start to backpedal.In this episode Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans talk about why traditional organizations and teams (and even the two of us) covet and hoard information, and what it looks and feels like to let information flow. Later, they’re joined by the cofounder and CEO of Buffer, Joel Gascoigne, who shares how Buffer made "defaulting to transparency" a core value and never looked back.Learn more about Buffer and their commitment to transparency at https://buffer.com/ and https://buffer.com/about#transparencyLearn more about Joel at his website or via LinkedIn or Twitter.Resources mentioned:Dave Snowden's Principles for Managing Knowledge -----------------------------Our book is available now at bravenewwork.comWe want to hear from you. Send your feedback to podcast@theready.comLooking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com