At Work with The Ready

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, we took to Twitter and LinkedIn to find out what you're wondering about. And you came through big time.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans hear questions about check-in rounds, leadership, and the post-pandemic move back to work. If you ever feel a question percolating as you're listening, just drop us a line at [email protected] and we'll include you in a future episode.

Mentioned references:

Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

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00:00 Intro + Check-In: If you were a beverage of any kind, what would you be?

03:00 Question 1 - Do check in rounds always need to be fun? Should I be making them more serious?

06:26 Question 2 - Why is the type of leader who only takes and is mostly interested in themselves typically over-represented in a company’s leadership, vs those who give and focus on collaboration?

14:07 Question 3 - What should leaders and teams be thinking about as they transition towards “return to office” discussions?

21:58 Wrap Up: Send us your questions!

It's been six weeks since George Floyd was murdered, and activism around the Black Lives Matter movement has reached new heights. For many of us, it's triggered incredibly challenging conversations and reflections about who we are and who we want to be. It feels like now is the time for real change—but what kind? How can each of us play our part without blame or shame? And where do we begin?

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans are joined by their colleague and resident JEDI knight, Sharan Bal to talk about the peril and promise of this moment, and what change agents like us ought to do about it. We don't have all the answers, but we're starting anyway.

Learn more about Sharan on LinkedIn.

Mentioned references:

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Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

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00:00 Intro + Check-In: What should our listeners know about us and our social identities?

04:02 What is JEDI

10:04 The Ready’s position in this moment

12:16 Thinking about change using the OS Canvas

20:51 Is it the people or the system or both?

25:29 The real learning doesn’t happen in the training. It happens in the work

31:35 All “modern” work practices predate the civil Rights movement

36:24 What might “different” actually look like

49:29 What’s next for The Ready’s JEDI journey

55:41 Wrap Up: Leave us a review!

We recorded this episode almost two months ago, and while so much has changed since then (look for an upcoming episode on DEI and BLM), the challenges we face sitting down at our computers every morning have not. They've only intensified. How are we supposed to move our work forward with everything that's going on out there in the world? And what is productivity when it's not defined by economists but by us?

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, about how to define and achieve progress in a period of chaos and distraction.

Learn more about David Allen on LinkedIn and Twitter, or by reading his book Getting Things Done (2015 rev.).

Learn more about the Getting Things Done at the website.

Mentioned references:

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Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

With much of the working world collaborating remotely these days, one thing is abundantly clear: facilitation matters, especially when we're not in the same room.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans commiserate about the difficulty of keeping everybody focused from afar, as well as the top tips and tricks for producing a great remote meeting.

Mentioned references:

-Parabol

-Basecamp

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Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

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00:00 Intro + Check-in: What is your current setup for a marathon video meeting?

03:43 Purpose of a facilitator and types of meetings

06:37 Remote facilitation quirks we’re seeing out in the wild early in the pandemic

13:50 Pace of meetings

15:39 Role of meeting chat/discussion spaces

22:30 Video vs no video - a time for both

24:00 Remote facilitator’s responsibility for vibes

28:26 Wrap-up: Leave us a review and tell your friends!

Without bureaucracy and compliance, how can we ensure that we remain aligned and coherent while also leaving room for judgment? The answer: principles.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans explore how to craft a useful principle—and how to make use of them day-to-day.

Read The Ready's article for more information on principles here.

Mentioned references:

------------------

Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

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00:00 Intro + Check-In: What are you doing for fitness these days?

03:46 Defining principles

12:42 Considering first principles for a team

16:40 Using principles to guide away from shenanigans

23:18 Nervous system response to strong principles

26:34 Picking your principles

35:51 Aaron and Rodney’s principles hit list

41:03 Wrap up. Leave us a review!

Not that long ago, we were living in a grow-grow-grow economy where stock options in a hot venture-backed startup were what most employees coveted. Today, a profitable bootstrapped company that shares its profit with its own employees feels like a revelation.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak with Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of ConvertKit, about how his bootstrapped software company shares profit with its employees, and while we're at it, how they think about compensation more generally. Hopefully, some of our listeners will follow in their footsteps.

Learn more about Nathan on LinkedIn and Twitter.

You can read the thread that sparked this episode here: https://twitter.com/nathanbarry/status/1231227172238422016

Learn more about ConvertKit at their website.

Mentioned references:

-----------

Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

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00:00 Intro + Check-In: Share one way in which you are difficult to work with, and one way in which you are easy to work with.

04:21 Nathan’s ConvertKit story

05:56 ConvertKit’s profit sharing approach

13:16 Walking away from tying performance intro profit sharing

17:03 Calculating what profit is available to share

20:20 Shadow of profit sharing

24:09 ConvertKit’s transparency principles

27:07 The other components of compensation

33:06 Trade-offs to reach philosophical outcomes

36:37 Nathan’s advice for leaders navigating this moment

39:44 Wrap Up: Leave us a review!

Most of us are working remotely. But we're just treading water, we haven't really mastered it. That's why it's important to talk about remote work after the novelty wears off—when the home office is just... the office. In this episode, we speak with Sid Sijbrandij, Cofounder and CEO of GitLab, about how their 1,290 team members work remotely in support of a $2.75B business. For Sid's team, remote work is a way of life. What can we learn from them?

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans explore what happens when a company isn't forced to be remote, but actually wants to be.

Learn more about Sid on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Learn More about GitLab at their website or on Twitter.

Learn more about GitLab’s remote work policies.

Mentioned references:

Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

It's the question that's on everyone's mind these days: "What does the future hold?" In moments like these when uncertainty is especially high, having the right lenses and mental models is the difference between being ready and being overwhelmed.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak with Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick at WIRED and author of The Inevitable, about how he thinks (about how he thinks) about predicting the future. And we make some guesses of our own.

Learn more about Kevin at his website and find him on Twitter.

Mentioned references:

------------------------------------------

Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

With the Ready For Anything series behind us, we're jumping right in to Season Three of the podcast! For this season, we're going to play with the format—making it shorter, sweeter, and (hopefully) even more helpful.

Before the pandemic, many of our technologies, markets, and institutions had what Douglas Rushkoff calls an "antihuman agenda." Today, the limitations of that agenda are showing.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans speak with Douglas about how our economic and social operating systems need to change (and are changing) to meet this moment.

Learn more about Douglas at his website and on LinkedIn.

Learn more about Team Human at the website or by listening to the Team Human podcast.

Mentioned references:

---------------------------

Our book is available now at bravenewwork.com

We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Looking for some help with your own transformation? Visit theready.com

This is the thirteenth and final episode in a series devoted to teams in transition due to the Novel Coronavirus. It's about more than simply adapting to remote work—it's about adopting (in the midst of this chaos) a way of working that will make you ready for anything.

Today's episode explores the area of compensation and the role that will play in navigating this uncertainty.

This Brave New Work miniseries with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans is based on The Ready's OS Canvas which is featured in Brave New Work.

Mentioned references:

Send the questions you'd like to see answered in this series to [email protected]

Does your team need help navigating this moment? Email us at [email protected]