We’ve all been there: trying to suss out what a colleague’s crossed arms meant during a presentation; reading between the lines on a passive-aggressive message; or struggling to interpret a perplexing emoji reaction (what do pineapples have to do with the budget?). We're all just doing our best at understanding our coworkers with little to no real information. That’s where a “User Manual to Me” can come in handy. These personalized handbooks can provide a helpful framework for others to better understand our behaviors, quirks, needs, desires, and working styles—if we commit to getting real when writing our own.In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans dive into how teams can make and use these manuals in a meaningful way, including: Why it’s better to be “real” versus “aspirational” when filling one out How you can dig deeper when you keep getting “polite” answers Why user manuals are living documents that should be revisited over time What we can learn about ourselves by making one Additional “User Manual to Me” Inspiration: Adam Bryant - New York Times Brad Feld - Blog 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----------------00:00 Check-in: What's the warning sign on the back of your box?03:55 What is a user manual to me?08:54 Benefits of making a user manual11:07 Why people don't answer some questions honestly13:13 Aspirational vs real agreements20:12 Aaron & Rodney's manuals22:03 Q1 - What do people misunderstand about you?23:33 Q2 - How can people earn an extra gold star with you?27:01 Varsity Q1 - What pulls you below the line?29:34 Varsity Q2 - What are you worried about?34:00 Facilitating user manuals with your own team

Whether your company is fully remote, fully in-person, or somewhere in-between, work in 2023 (and beyond) will require healthy and robust digital ecosystems—because that’s where so much work takes place day in and day out. Still, wanting a first-rate digital-first workplace and having one are two different things—and there’s no one-size-fits-all roadmap to follow. Every team has different needs, so we can expect different journeys. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other.In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans reflect on The Ready’s early years (hat tip to Panera for providing O.G. office space), sharing advice and learnings from the growing pains of yesteryear. Then, as part of our partnership with Slack, they sit down with Kelsey Stevenson, Chief Product Officer at Bitly, to talk about how the growing company is evolving its own digital-first workplace and the experiments they’re running to build trust, culture, collaboration—and a very active pets channel in Slack.Learn more about Bitly: bit.lyConnect with Kelsey on LinkedIn: bit.ly/3WX2waVOur 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

Why are “Ask Us Anything” episodes our favorite ones to make? Because our listener questions are never not inspiring, provocative, moving, sharp…just insert your favorite emoji here. What can we say? Y’all are the best.In today's episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans head back to the mailbag (and try to break their record of answering only two questions per episode). They offer their hot takes (naturally) and dig into: Why workplace rituals matter and how to develop ones that are legit meaningful What to do when leaders at the top say they’re hungry for change…and then block it left, right, and center How to help teams transition to new tools, especially when that adoption requires brand new skills and brand new levels of (currently non-existent) trust 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

Emojis might seem like all fun and games—but they can also speak a thousand words about a company’s culture. If they’re used, how they’re used, who uses them, whose posts always gets peppered with dozens of fire or rocket ship reactions—that’s all pretty juicy (and potentially spicy) information about an organization’s sense of camaraderie, connection, trust, agreements…you name it.In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans unpack the power of those little icons at work and ask questions like: What role do emojis play in remote work? How can emojis help asynchronous teams increase efficiency and decrease friction? What can our emoji habits reveal about unspoken workplace agreements and behaviors? How do teams build bespoke emoji libraries and languages? Why can sending your boss an emoji feel like a risky move? How can emojis contribute to more equitable workplaces? Is there a secret emoji council and where’s our invite? Slack x Duolingo’s research on emoji use at work: https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/emoji-use-at-workOur 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

There’s a lot of “Looking for a job” energy in the world right now—but interviewing can be a nerve-racking experience. Folks on both sides of the equation want something—reliable gig, reliable colleague—and that can give way to performativity, misrepresentation, and hidden agendas. Because when an interview process doesn’t incentivize authenticity, negative patterns can pop off real quick. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans offer guidance on building better interviews, including: The importance for interviewees to self-assess skills already mastered and skills yet learned How both sides of the interviewing equation can create space for more curiosity and nuance The lies we tell ourselves about resumes and cover letters Why designing interviews that simulate real-life work are so critical The top four questions Aaron asks himself as an interviewer Do you have any cringeworthy interview stories? We want to hear all about ’em. Send us your goofs, your guffaws, and your facepalms at podcast@theready.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

Work in 2022 felt…a little messy. Or a lot messy: Back-to-office ultimatums; wages not keeping up with inflation; waves of layoffs in the tech industry; handwringing over quiet quitting. So… will this year be better, worse, or same old same old?In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans look into a crystal ball with Sheela Subramanian, friend-of-the-pod and co-founder of Slack’s Future Forum, to explore what this new year might have in store for us and the future of work. We explore many juicy questions—”Is 2023 the year we finally retire the 9-to-5? Why do executives continue to live in a separate world from their employees about building work culture? What will AI actually do to dozens of different gigs and industries?”—and offer our own hopes, predictions, and intentions for shaking up the status quo this year.Follow Sheela Subramanian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheelasubramanian/Slack's Future Forum: https://futureforum.com/Previous Sheela episode:Ep. 129 - How the Future Works with Slack’s Brian Elliott and Sheela SubramanianOur 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

Fancy clothes. Beef Wellington. Movies until midnight. We really are having lovely holiday breaks—which we’re still on! But we’d be lying if we said we didn’t miss you, so Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans are back again with another Brave New Work bonus mini-sode, the “Happy New Year!” edition.This one packs a punch because we have an exciting announcement to share: The Ready is releasing its first-ever mobile course next week! Tune in for the good stuff—like what the course is called, who it’s for, why we made it, and what participants will learn—and sign up for up-to-date launch details right here: https://thereadyacademy.ck.page/We’re back in action next Monday with a fresh, full-length episode. See you then!Mentioned in this episode: Rodney's favorite end-of-year "carol": https://bit.ly/3v73ZzE Aaron's go-to beef Wellington recipe: https://bit.ly/3Wig29h 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

The podcast crew is taking a two-week holiday break for some R&R—but if you thought we’d say goodbye to 2022 without saying goodbye to y’all, you’d be wrong. That’s why we made this bonus mini-episode (a.k.a. a mini-sode—and yes, it’s a real thing).In our first-ever Brave New Work mini-sode, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans check out of the year with an extra-special, two-part check-in round. So slip on your fuzziest socks, grab a wintery beverage of choice, and tune into some of our 2022 reflections, highlights, and musings. We’ll be back next week—next year!—with another mini-sode. Happy holidays, everyone.Bonus check-in questions: As the next year rolls around, what are you letting go of? What’s the biggest surprise this year brought your way? What’s a lesson from this year you want to carry into the next? Fill in the blank: “In 2023, I’m looking forward to more _______________ and less _______________.” What’s the nicest gift you gave yourself this year? What's your Brave New Work highlight from 2022? What’s something you got really good at this year? 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

Being influential sounds great, even desirable. But doing influence? That’s when alarm bells go off in our brains—because we tend to imagine the act of influencing as manipulative, coercive, and 100% transactional. And sure, we’ve all had icky experiences with influence. But when we flatten its inherent complexity, we risk missing out on influence’s ability to instigate positive impact. Yale School of Management professor and author Zoe Chance believes influence is an untapped superpower; that’s why she recently published the book, Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. And it’s why we asked her onto the show to help us break down some common misconceptions about influence, better harness its power to catalyze systemic change, and learn how to ask what she calls the “Magic Question.”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

We won’t mince words: Layoffs suck. They heap very real stress and chaos onto very real people’s lives. And as we’ve seen reported lately, big waves of layoffs are hitting several companies—and thousands of people—hard right now. This pile of not-good news sparked some questions for us, like: Why are layoffs a go-to cost-cutting lever? What pre-layoff org design decisions put employers and employees in this gnarly position? And why does every CEO letter announcing mass layoffs sound like it was written by the same robot?In today’s episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans, who’ve been on both sides of the layoff aisle, spend time with these queries and dig into: The all-around messiness of the traditional layoff process Why companies default to short-term thinking when the boom times boom Dehumanizing layoff practices we should shelve for good Creating clear containers and agreements for handling layoffs How we could design a layoff moment that’s truly people-positive 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