Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin have helped teams around the world adopt more modern ways of working and on At Work with The Ready they’re sharing the inside scoop with you, too. Whether you’re struggling with a carousel of ineffective meetings, annual strategy sessions that go nowhere, or decision-making churn that never ceases, they’ve seen it all and are here to help. In each episode, they'll break down common workplace challenges and show you the moves—both big and small—to start making real,…
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Most organizations run on two default modes of deciding: build consensus until everyone's exhausted, or debate until the boss makes the call. Both feel normal and both quietly stall the work, so how do you introduce something better without triggering resistance? In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam trade their favorite on-ramps. Rodney starts small: be the person who asks "wait, have we actually…
Hard truth time: your executive team sets the ceiling on how fast everything below it can move and most of them aren't built for that job. Decisions pile up on the CEO's desk because nobody's clear who owns them. Board prep swallows whole weeks. One person quietly absorbs all the coordination nobody designed for. Then a real change arrives, and the team soft-pedals it out through their functions…
Sam Altman and Elon Musk built some of the most valuable companies on the planet while doing nearly everything we would advise against. So a listener wants to know: if ego and raw self-belief keep landing people at the top, is all this talk of trust and participation on our show worth it? In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam get honest about survivorship bias, why colorful founders get all the ink…
If you hired a chief of staff to be your leadership team’s star athlete, don’t let them languish on the bench. At many organizations, chiefs of staff are meant to execute high-wire strategic work. But the job is often reduced to: glorified project management, executive cat-herding, and catering to the CEO’s whims. They compensate for bad work design through effort and influence, carrying big…
Every org has process that started as protection and calcified into performance: boxes we check to prove nothing bad happened, rather than to help good work happen. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener trying to resist the "checklistification" of their org. They draw a line where good checklists turn bad and explore the limits for what checklists can—and can't—solve in your…
Volatility is just the new normal, and it's crushed everyone's appetite for complexity at the exact moment complexity demands attention. Executives who used to love a whiteboard now say "just tell me the answer." Five-year plans read as fiction within months. Employees trust leadership less than ever and with AI in the mix the old moats (talent, pricing, product, position) are eroding or gone. So…
You can see it clearly: the project is FUBAR, the reporting is rosy, and the people with the power to do something about it are several levels above you. But sending a flare up the chain feels risky—especially when your boss's boss's boss is the one you need to reach. So what do you actually do? In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener stuck in that exact spot and offer a few…
Everyone tells you leaving a job is a math problem: runway, comp, the next offer, the spreadsheet that finally tips. But most people who ask "how do I know when it's time?" have already answered the question. They just haven't let themselves hear it yet. In this episode, Rodney and Sam get personal, both are in the middle of their own transitions, and unpack what it actually takes to leave well.…
Plenty of companies make the move to employee ownership—ESOPs, EOTs, buyouts—and then wonder why nothing really changes. The shares transfer, the announcement goes out, and then... people still feel like employees. The ownership is technically there, but the culture hasn't caught up. In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener who's seen this gap firsthand and wants to know which…
Fifteen years ago, the future of work seemed inevitable: bureaucracy was crumbling, adaptive organizations were the next default, and a whole movement of practitioners was going to get us there. That future never arrived. Agile transformation offices are being eliminated, the pendulum has swung hard back to command-and-control, and the companies we held up as proof are still the exceptions, not…
