Shows
The Future Of Teamwork with Dane GroeneveldDesigning High-Functioning Teams with Sam SpurlinWhat does it really take to build teams that can adapt, move fast, and still stay human? In this episode of The Future of Teamwork, Dane Groeneveld chats with Sam Spurlin, an organization designer, future of work strategist, and transformation advisor who has spent the past decade helping executive teams rethink how work happens. Together, Dane and Sam dig into ideas like mission-based teams, team charters, and how AI can play a role in teaming. If you’re rethinking hierarchy or curious about self-managed teams, this episode offers thoughtful insights and plenty of practical takeaways.🔗 Connect with Sam S...
2026-02-1951 min
At Work with The Ready43. Dual Transformation Is The Future...And Nobody's PreparedMost organizations are built to do exactly what they do…and that’s the problem. When a core business starts to decay due to disruption, automation, or shifting customer demand, the instinct is to double down on efficiency, cost cutting, and short-term fixes. But that focus often crowds out the harder, riskier work of building what comes next. Nearly a decade ago, Dual Transformation offered a clear and compelling framework for this dilemma, yet nobody seems to be actually doing it.
In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin unpack why dual transformations are so r...
2026-02-0949 min
At Work with The Ready36. What AI Is Teaching Us About OurselvesGet the AI Coffee Club toolkit to start one at your own organization: Download here!
AI isn’t coming—it’s here. Every organization is already feeling its impact, whether through new tools, shifting expectations, or the quiet panic of not knowing where to start. But most companies are doing what they always do: treating transformation like a plan instead of an experiment. And as AI reshapes how work gets done, the biggest risk isn’t falling behind—it’s automating the dysfunctions you already have.
In this episode of At Work with The Rea...
2025-11-0349 min
At Work with The Ready34. Even More Bad Bosses and How to Defeat Them, P2Every worker has a bad boss story—but why are they so common? In this two-part series, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into the archetypes of dysfunctional leaders and the systems that keep them in power. Because bad bosses aren’t accidents—they’re often a predictable response to organizational pressures.
In Part 2, they take on the Ghost—the slippery, conflict-avoiding boss who’s always hard to find when decisions need to be made—and the Self-Promoter, the credit-stealing leader who thrives on claiming other people’s work as their own. From the frustration of c...
2025-10-0627 min
At Work with The Ready34. Bad Bosses and How to Defeat Them, Part 1Every worker has a bad boss story—but why are they so common? In this two-parter, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig into the archetypes of dysfunctional leaders and the systems that keep them in power. Because bad bosses aren’t accidents—they’re often a predictable response to organizational pressures.
In Part 1, they take on the Micromanager, the Rager, and the Martyr. From obsessive control and volcanic tempers to bosses who never log off, these archetypes reveal the deeper fears and systemic incentives driving destructive behavior. Along the way, Rodney and Sam share strategi...
2025-09-2237 min
¡Reinventándonos! PodcastEp.86: Changing the Way We Work with Sam SpurlinGreat conversation and great episode with Sam Spurlin! Sam is a partner and first employee at The Ready. Over the past ten years he has partnered with and advised numerous organizations on their journey toward more people positive, complexity conscious, and effective ways of working.He has worked with senior leadership teams from GE, FreshDirect, Pacific Gas & Electric, MITRE, Ritual, and others. Prior joining The Ready he consulted with David Allen on the updated edition of his bestselling book, Getting Things Done, and published with Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the future of work and positive...
2025-09-0952 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Giving HRBPs the Future-of-Work Makeover They Deserve [Rebroadcast]Rebroadcast note: We're hard at work recording a brand new miniseries for January, so this week we're resharing one this episode from our Future of HR miniseries. As we've worked with companies over the last year to reimagine their HR departments, we've seen this episode's ideas and lessons about evolving the HRBP even more important in practice. So take a listen with some fresh ears, and we'll see in two weeks with a brand new episode.The role of HR Business Partner is often a tale of two experiences. On the one hand, HRBPs...
2024-12-0939 min
At Work with The Ready19. All The Small Things: The Power of Good HabitsWhile exploring bad meetings a few episodes ago, Rodney and Sam hit on something that doesn’t often get a lot of air time: the power of good habits and the discipline to care about the small things. Because when we’re trying to change companies on an atomic level, it can feel like small potatoes to focus on check-in rounds, or writing Slack messages, or how we compose to-do lists.But you can’t run toward the future of work at full speed when your shoes aren’t properly tied. Here’s what we know: H...
2024-09-1655 min
At Work with The Ready12. Breaking the Cycle of Meeting-ocrityIt seems everybody’s up in arms about meetings these days. “There’s too many! They ones we have suck! We have meetings to prepare for other meetings! They keep me from doing my actual job!” We get it, and we hear you. In fact, between BNW and our current show, we’ve devoted 9 episodes to meetings! What more could there be to say in a tenth?Turns out, a ton. There’s so much intertwined with modern meeting culture that we’re often doomed to failure before we even get in the room. From the trap of the status...
2024-06-1057 min
At Work with The Ready10. RACI is The Wrong Answer To The Right QuestionThe RACI matrix (as well its cousins DACI, DARCI, etc.) aims to neatly categorize stakeholders into roles—who’s responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for every decision your team makes. We spend a lot of time filling out those RACI boxes, because it’s supposed to give us order and predictability—a single source of truth for all future choices.We’re all about achieving real clarity, but we often see RACIs treated as a one-and-done exercise, rather than something that evolves with a team. People end up in the “R” or “A” space without having the actual authority t...
2024-05-1349 min
At Work with The Ready9. Ask Us Anything No. 1: You Asked, We Answered“Ask Us Anything” episodes were a Brave New Work tradition, and we knew they were going to live on in this next new chapter of the show. What we didn’t know was how much harder the questions would be this time around! Turns out, after nearly 200 shows our audience is pretty sharp and asking some very specific questions.On today’s episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin look at what arrived in our inbox and tackle our listeners thorniest questions…and even tease a little something coming on the horizon.
2024-04-2939 min
At Work with The Ready8. Traditional Consulting Sold You a Great Idea. Now What?For decades, traditional consulting (think “management” or “strategy” varieties now synonymous with the Big Three) has been a go-to move for organizations looking for a shake up. Need a bulletproof vision for the future or a new org restructuring that’ll win over the C-suite and shareholders? You can’t beat their analytical prowess, strategy design, and slick presentation.But too often clients wind up stuck with expensive change plans they can’t execute on their own. Without real coaching, structure, and experienced guidance, these efforts stand a high chance of fizzling out and collecting dust on a shelf. Facin...
2024-04-1550 min
At Work with The Ready7. Sync or Swim: Riding the Waves of Async WorkFor decades, face-to-face working has been the default way of working. Launching a new project; untangling an OS problem; updating a team on progress made in the last week—our classic go-to for all those different kinds of work is blocking off time on a calendar. When in doubt, just corral everybody into a room, real or virtual.But this “one-size-fits-all” approach is coming up short as work evolves. And while almost everyone dreads having a meeting-stuffed calendar, ideas for what to try instead can be in short supply. Plus, when 85% of leaders find it hard to trust...
2024-04-0148 min
At Work with The Ready6. If You're Faking It, You Won't Make ItEvery time something changes at work, someone’s bound to be upset. Digital transformations take resources from analog teams; restructuring a department can take authority from one group and give it to another; removing a step from a workflow can eliminate a role altogether. Any change, including those meant to make things better, will create winners and losers and that’s bound to kick up a hornet’s nest of feelings.Here’s the puzzling part: Despite years of research showing us that surfacing and processing these feelings is key to unlocking a company’s ability to be adapt...
2024-03-1848 min
OrgDev with DistinctionReinvent Your Organisation with Sam Spurlin The Ready - OrgDev Episode 12We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!Our latest video is an interview with Sam Spurlin, consultant at The Ready (founded by Aaron Dignan, author of Brave New Work). We explore practical strategies and insights with Sam for shaping the future of work.The Ready are on a mission to revolutionise the work landscape envisioning a future that is more human, adaptive, meaningful, and equitable. In this conversation, Sam sheds light on The Ready's proactive approach to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment. Join us as we explore Sam's jo...
2024-03-1152 min
At Work with The Ready5. Silos Are For Corn, Not For PeopleAsk anyone about organizational silos and they’re bound to tell you they’re bad. When we run Tension and Practice exercises with clients, “We work in silos” often shows up as Tension No. 1 holding a team back. Yet like a moth to a flame, we keep gravitating toward them, building walls that are higher and more insurmountable than ever before. What gives?In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dive into the bottomless ball pit that is organizational silos, exploring why we think they’ll solve all our problems, how they’r...
2024-03-0446 min
At Work with The Ready4. Return to Office: Real Issue or Handy Distraction?You can’t throw a stone on LinkedIn without hitting at least one post about return-to-office policies. From CEOs to employees, from thought leaders to maybe even your mayor, everyone is taking a side, doubling down, and yelling into the void as loud as they can. Where people work is being treated as the most important issue—the existential sea change that will either make or break a company.In reality, the RTO debate is the superficial fight we have instead of addressing the deeper, tougher, and way more complex issues that really matter (think questions around purp...
2024-02-1941 min
At Work with The Ready3. How 1:1 Meetings Are Messing Up Your Culture1:1s (or one-on-ones) are a ubiquitous part of our daily working lives. These two-person meetings (a manager + a direct report = a classic 1:1) are meant to be a space for diving into individual challenges, fostering trust, building stronger relationships, and providing a forum for feedback and recognition. When designed with intention, they can be great.But at some point, 1:1s jumped the shark. Today, we see more and more companies with an overwhelming “1:1 culture,” where calendars are packed with a million two-person meetings (on top of lots of other meetings), leaving precious little time to get work done. Wors...
2024-02-0540 min
At Work with The Ready2. Your PowerPoint Deck Is Not a StrategyIt's January! New beginnings? Ambitious plans? Giant commitments to change? They’re on everyone’s mind. Companies included—since now’s the time when glossy PowerPoint decks are so eagerly rolled out. And those PowerPoints? They’re always brimming with promise for the year ahead.But there's a glaring disconnect between those slides (all 73 of them) and eventual success we often don’t address. Because how frequently do those meticulously crafted plans pan out? Does the new agenda account for the day-to-day running of the company? Is the plan flexible enough to handle economic curveballs? (We remember 2020, right?)
2024-01-2241 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: The End Is Just the BeginningIn July, we began exploring what HR’s current reality looked like and how People teams could evolve into a better, brighter, more adaptive future. Thirteen episodes, three guest interviews, a record breaking AUA, and lots of unexpected hot dog talk later, we’ve reached the end. And while endings can be bittersweet, this miniseries, proudly co-hosted by two org design nerds, is transforming that feeling into a sweet retrospective.In today’s final Future of HR episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin look back on the three months they spent in the deep end of the HR poo...
2023-10-3040 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Slaying Your Company’s Org Debt MonsterSpooky season is here, so it seems fitting to share a horror story. Because there’s a monster draining time and energy from most of our organizations. This sneaky shapeshifter can take any form, show up at any time, and is one of the more destructive, chaotic forces we’re forced to deal with at work.We’re talking about the monster that is org debt—and HR has been trapped in a maze with it for decades. Worse still, the maze’s towering walls and serpentine corridors come from outdated policies and processes HR largely built themselves...
2023-10-0945 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Finding a Third Way with AI Through The Noise, Part 2Was it ever possible for our first AI episode to not be a two-parter? Probably not. So we’re back today with more thoughts on AI and the Future of HR.In this miniseries, Brave New Work’s Rodney Evans is joined by friend-of-the-pod and Ready OG Sam Spurlin to dive into how HR can become more resilient, efficient, and equitable.Last week, they dove into the AI pool to begin filtering out the noise about how this coming wave will impact all of us. Today on episode 9, Rodney and Sam keep swimming around the deep...
2023-09-2524 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Finding a Third Way with AI Through The Noise, Part 1One midnight scroll through LinkedIn is all it takes to be overwhelmed with AI stories and hot takes. There’s a massive amount of confusion, apprehension, excitement, and just general noisiness to make sense of, some which is created by AI tools themselves. But as more and more AI-powered solutions promising to revolutionize HR flood the market—and as more and more employees spiral with worry that the’ll be automated out of their jobs—how are we supposed to get caught up on some AI basics? Let alone actually use these tools at work?In this miniseri...
2023-09-1837 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Putting the “Change” Back in Change Agents and Building Your HR Talent MarketplaceStop us if you’ve heard this one before: A company hires a change agent (think anyone with “org effectiveness,” “change management,” or “strategy and efficiency” in their title) with promises of how they’ll be the one to revolutionize the company’s future. Several months later, the change agent realizes the company is fighting them at every turn. Despite all the talk, these roles often have minimal authority and autonomy, so those lofty dreams of change? They end up unfulfilled.But for HR departments heading toward Level 4, The Marketplace, of our maturity model, these roles need to step off the si...
2023-09-1143 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Giving HRBPs the Future-of-Work Makeover They DeserveThe role of HR Business Partner is often a tale of two experiences. On the one hand, HRBPs are some of the most empathetic and passionate people you’ll ever meet. On the other hand, they’re stuck on the hamster wheel of busywork, bouncing from crisis to crisis without the authority to prioritize their energy—and without the respect from leadership to make a real difference. Look up “burnout” in the dictionary and odds are you’ll find a picture of an HRBP.In this miniseries, Brave New Work’s Rodney Evans is joined by friend-of-the-pod and Ready OG S...
2023-08-1437 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Building Your Capabilities Pt. 2 - From Levels 3 to 5...And Beyond!In this miniseries, Brave New Work’s Rodney Evans is joined by friend-of-the-pod and Ready OG Sam Spurlin to dive into how HR can become more resilient, efficient, and equitable.Last week, Rodney and Sam teamed up with Future of HR team member Meg Saxby to explore our new maturity model, assessment, and the six key capabilities every HR department needs to learn, strengthen, and evolve to succeed in the future of work. Today, on episode 4, Rodney, Sam, and Meg finish that two-parter. Which reminds us: If you haven’t yet listened to last week’s episode, do tha...
2023-08-0729 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Building Your Capabilities, Pt. 1 - Getting to Level 3After decades of dealing with stagnant practices, burnout, and competing agendas, HR might be tempted to trade in the old family minivan for a flashy new race car and just put the pedal to the metal. A car’s a car…right? While we’re big proponents of “start by starting”, without the skill, confidence, and ability to take tight turns or use the paddle shifters (you’re still with us, right?), you’ll run into problems. Building fluency and comfort with the fundamentals is how your HR team can level and go full speed ahead.In this miniserie...
2023-07-3141 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Convincing Your Coworkers and the C-SuiteOne of the toughest work tasks? Convince someone else to back your idea. And if you’re in HR, it’s exceptionally tough to get buy-in from other functions. Maybe your coworkers think they know better because you just handle “people” stuff—and how hard is that? Maybe the CFO will only open the company chest for something with ROI they can track. Or maybe the CEO is hyper-concerned with legacy or the company’s stock price and doesn’t see the value in engaging with your employee engagement survey results. If you’re wondering why so many HR change efforts f...
2023-07-2438 min
At Work with The ReadyThe Future of HR: Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept ItIt’s no secret things haven’t been working in HR for… a while. When you include the last few years of navigating a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, dysfunctional hybrid work policies, rounds of layoffs, and unprecedented economic churn, it’s easy to see HR has been pushed to a breaking point. Human Resources? They feel anything but human.Trapped between competing mandates to mitigate risk while also transforming office culture and the employee experience, it’s no wonder HR can’t steward the change it so desperately wants to. But what if there was a way out?In this ne...
2023-07-1740 min
GreenPill97 - DAO Alignment with Sam Spurlin of The Ready✨ Subscribe to the Green Pill Podcast ✨ https://pod.link/1609313639 🟢 Get the GreenPilled Book 🟢 https://greenpill.party/  Apple Show Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greenpill/id1609313639  Spotify Show Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0l6aXWC94dd0RA3tkKfxjd ------ Is learning from frontline veterans your thing, anon? Sam is a Partner at the organizational change and transformation consultancy, The Ready, and is co-stewarding The Ready's efforts to contribute to DAOs and the web3 space more broadly. Join us today as we dive in today a...
2023-03-1753 min
The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd#136 Complexity & Complicatedness - Sam Spurlin on playing hockey, why he quit teaching, studying at Claremont, leaving a PhD program, working pro bono too start his career, complicated vs complex systems, how to deal with ego in organizations, remote work failures, podcasting with his brother, and the importance of a retrospective meetingSam is a partner at The Ready - an organizational design consultancy operating fully remotely. He is also a prolific writer, passionate about personal development, self-managing organizations and adopting a more human, adaptive, and meaningful way of working.🎥🍿 YOUTUBE: WATCH HERELinks:Twitter: @samspurlinInstagram: samspurlinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/samspurlinSam's writing: samspurlin.com/writingSam's writing on Medium: samspurlin.medium.comNewsletter: thedeliberate.substack.com/p/landing-page⌛TIMESTAMPS(00:53) - The scripts that Sam grew up with
(10:29) - Teaching and why Sam quit
(17:30) - Claremont and letting go of the PhD
(26:09) - Working pro bono to...
2023-03-061h 11
RMIT FORWARDSam Spurlin, a new organisational OSPeter Thomas talks to Sam Spurlin, one of our FORWARD Fellows and partner at The Ready, an organisational design consultancy focused on the future of work.
Sam and Peter talk about the work that The Ready does in helping organisations find better ways to work. The Ready is based on the premise that as the world becomes increasingly complex and uncertain, bureaucracy and hierarchy are holding us back. The organizational operating system is broken and needs to be fixed
Sam and Peter look at how The Ready works, how it seeks to have an impact and chat about some potential...
2022-12-1628 min
The Clique PodcastEp. 23 [The Ready] Exploring DAO Org Design Tensions Part - 3 ~ Sam SpurlinSam Spurlin is a partner at the Ready, a self-managing organization design consultancy focused on changing how the world works & one of the foremost DAO org design thinkers in the space.
For Part 3, we get into his time acting as an external facilitator with GitcoinDAO & the story of how he landed the gig through connecting with Disruption Joe, FDD Workstream Lead, GitcoinDAO. We see his observations around how tensions were rampant across the workstreams during the budgeting process & talking about the value of a clear essential intent to clarify these important conversations. We talk about some of...
2022-11-2440 minThe Clique PodcastEp. 23 [The Ready] Exploring DAO Org Design Tensions Part - 2 ~ Sam SpurlinSam Spurlin is a partner at the Ready, a self-managing organization design consultancy focused on changing how the world works & one of the foremost DAO org design thinkers in the space. We've got him on board for a series of episodes to discuss DAO org design, the tensions that pervade it when the organizational system is not tuned properly & how to address it.
In Part 2 of the series, we set the stage for the DAO org design mindset talking about Sam’s observations of the Ready as a self managing org, talking about the basic fundamentals that DA...
2022-11-2335 minThe Clique PodcastEp.23 [The Ready] Exploring DAO Org Design Tensions Part - 1 ~ Sam SpurlinSam Spurlin is a partner at the Ready, a self-managing organization design consultancy focused on changing how the world works & one of the foremost DAO org design thinkers in the space. We've got him on board for a series of episodes to discuss DAO org design, the tensions that pervade it when the organizational system is not tuned properly & how to address it. Â Â
In Part 1 of this series, we also talk about common org design tensions within the trad world like poor meeting cultures & addressing them with action meetings. DAO people may find a lot of nuggets to...
2022-11-2238 min
At Work with The ReadyUnsuck Your Next Work Meeting with Sam Spurlin [Rebroadcast][Rebroadcast note: This episode originally aired in July 2021.]If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: Meetings are the worst. Instead of being a meaningful work tool to help teams strategize efficiently, meetings more often block things—anything—from actually getting done. At The Ready, we’ve got a different method: action meetings. In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans are joined by longtime member Sam Spurlin, who dispenses a step-by-step guide to implementing and scaling effective action meetings, breaks down the best ways to “get people w...
2022-08-2938 min
At Work with The ReadyBrave New Work 80. Unsuck Your Next Work Meeting with Sam SpurlinIf we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: Meetings are the worst. Instead of being a meaningful work tool to help teams strategize efficiently, meetings more often block things—anything—from actually getting done. At The Ready, we’ve got a different method: action meetings.In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans invite longtime member Sam Spurlin on the show to dispense a step-by-step guide to implementing and scaling effective action meetings. They break down the best ways to “get people what they need” and reveal how...
2021-07-2738 min
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Nonprofit Lowdown#36-Upgrading Your Organizational Operating System with Sam SpurlinSo. Many. Truth. Bombs.Â
This interview with The Ready's Sam Spurlin. Â I reached out to Sam because I'm OBSESSED with the book Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan. Â So often in organizations when things aren't working, when communication breaks down, when we're having meetings about meetings--well, it just makes you crazy. Â Sam talks about how our approach to organizational change might be about identifying and fixing the operating system one experiment at a time. Â We talk so much about culture, but culture is created by organizational operating systems. Â Tune in to this very educational interview with Sam.
2019-05-3038 min
Chip Off The Old BlockWhen I Dip, You Dip, We Dip - Sam SpurlinIn the very first episode of the podcast we talk to Sam Spurlin, a friend from south of the border that eats his chips in a very unique and peculiar way. We will talk to Sam about why he does what he does and how he does and why it might say more about him than he might think.
2019-01-0628 min