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At Work with The Ready
44. Forget ROI: The Ethical Case for Org Design
00:52:13
Rodney and Sam unpack why “it’s profitable” isn’t a high enough bar for how we design work in 2026.
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- [00:01]
A
So much of my fieriness about it isn't even just like, about morals. It's just like, you can't run a good, thriving organization that can evolve when all of the resources and all of the power flow in one direction and are concentrated there. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to At Work with the Ready. I'm Rodney Evans and that guy over there is Sam Sperlin.
- [00:27]
B
Hello, Rodney Evans. And everybody out there listening.
- [00:31]
A
AI is rewriting the rules of work in the moment. Like, it feels like the future of work has arrived on our doorstep. And so now the question isn't so much whether or not we are going to adapt, but how you design work for what is happening now.
- [00:44]
B
You could say work design is no longer optional and the teams that treat it like a side project are going to get left behind. The ones that treat it as essential will keep up with the pace of change.
- [00:55]
A
So today we are going to dig into the ethical case for work work design. I'm super excited about this. It's gonna be a wild episode. I have so many hot takes about this topic. But first we're gonna check in and the check in because I get to do it today, so it gets to be witchy. Is what is your energy like today, but also just generally right now, what's your energy like? Sam?
- [01:23]
B
Interesting. You're catching me on a day and like a 24 hours. We're like, there's just been some hard stuff going on in. In my life. Like, not like huge, monumental things, but like some contentious conversations and some messed up things and some, like, disappointments from people who are like, you get bummed out when they disappoint you. So I'm bringing a little bit of, like, some energy of. It's kind of nice to just put my brain into this world for a little bit because other parts of my life are annoying me. And, you know, I think that probably I might be a little more dour than usual, which. What does that even really mean?
- [02:02]
A
Look out.
- [02:05]
B
No. I'm going to be a ray of goddamn sunshine. Here we go.
- [02:09]
A
Look, don't push it. You are allowed to be as grumpy as you want to. This is your show and you can be Eeyore if that's what the moment is calling for. I am similar. I have also very mixed vibes. I did some chatgpting this morning. I'm leaving on trip tomorrow, and this trip sort of crept up on me. It's been planned for a very, very long time. We're going on safari with some very dear friends and because it was planned so far in advance, I sort of forgot about it. And I have noticed this thing in myself where just before a big trip, I always feel like I'm getting sick. I always feel like I don't want to go. I'm always like, why do we say yes to these things? I feel a little bit overwhelmed. And I did a little bit of research this morning and apparent this is a real thing that is called pre departure collapse. And a lot of people basically experience this little window between all of the planning and the getting of yellow fever shots and actually being on the plane as a real energetic trough. So the adrenaline does not carry us through all the way to the plane ride. And there's this sort of profound dip in between where the whole nervous system crashes. And I'm right in there today. So as excited as I am about this episode, I would also not say that my energy is like high. I do not feel buoyant today in the way that I usually do.
- [03:38]
B
Okay, well, our combination will be, will be fun for this.
- [03:42]
A
What if this makes us wise?
- [03:45]
B
This is all it takes. Just be a little bit pissed off.
- [03:49]
A
Sam gets mad and I get completely exhausted. And then our wisdom increases by a factor of 10. We're going to find out.
- [03:55]
B
That's right. We're going to go for it. We're, we're going to experiment with it.
- [03:58]
A
So Sam's going to do the pattern today because this show is his idea and I'm very excited to hear it.
- [04:03]
B
Cool. So the initial thought kind of maybe coming out of the check in round in my energy that I was bringing is that I found myself being really annoyed that we always have to justify kind of the work that we do through a capitalist lens. Like we even just recently released an AUA short mini episode about the ROI of org design. Like we can talk about that all day long. And it's true. A lot of the stuff that we talk about, obviously, like there's good evidence that kind of human adaptive org design leads to better financial outcomes. And also I wanted us to just like spend one episode kind of setting the capitalist lens aside, the return on investment lens, the financial lens, and purely try to make the case for the work that we do, however you want to describe it, through kind of like an ethical moral lens. So my, my stab at a pattern here, calling it the, the ethics if profitable pattern. And it's the, the pattern of leaders and orgs supporting, you know, people, positive complexity, conscious org design only when justified by ROI and never because it's simply the right thing to do. What if we tried to make the most compelling case for doing this work through that ethical or moral lens only? So that's what we're going to try to do.
- [05:24]
A
I love it. I'm so excited about this. And even you just opening it up that way made me think about how many things that are just morally very sound in order to play in, like Capital B, business capitalist systems have to be justified through this lens. It's like we have to justify, like esg, we have to justify dei, we have to justify. It's like we only give health benefits because absenteeism goes down. And it's like, yeah, health benefits should be like a human right, like we should. It shouldn't only appear on a spreadsheet if there is, you know, if there's a positive percentage on the other side of the equation. So even as you were saying that, I'm like, why is it that things that are just inherently good aren't good enough to stand as their own case?
- [06:15]
B
Yeah.
- [06:16]
A
And that's the, that's what we're going to talk about today.
- [06:19]
B
Indeed it is. So I'm curious, is there a particular angle you wanted to take into this topic or how do you, how do we start to unwrap this present that I have brought to us?
- [06:30]
A
Well, so I'll tell you my overarching hypothesis about this topic, which is everything that we do in organizational or work design as we're now calling it, and I think actually is the more accurate term, everything that we do in work design at some level is creating clarity. We are seeking clarity. And part of that seeking of clarity is the myth busting of things that are long held truths about work. And so I feel like one of the ways in which we make the ethical case, because I think that's what we're doing today, is there is an ethical motivation to create clarity in organizations to do a few different things. One is to allow people and invite people to question long held truths. Like the idea that like productivity at an individual level is some kind of like moral good or imperative, which is just bullshit. And that making power structures visible, making compensation structures visible, having conversations about why you're pursuing certain metrics, just a level of clarity and a deepening of perception around systems to me is the ethical case for work design. It's like before we get to what you should do, instead, we at least have to understand the rules of the game that we're playing. And mostly, mostly our systems are designed to obfuscate those rules from the people who are not benefiting from them, which is almost everyone.
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense and it's connected. I think if I take one step back and I think about kind of my entry into this topic, it's something around the idea that work, it's a non negotiable for most people in the world. Like most of us are not independently wealthy, can just kind of do whatever the hell we want. We need some sort of employment to take care of our basic needs. And because it's not a voluntary sort of thing that we're all opting into, we all gotta do it. It feels like there should be a certain level of like do no harm aspect to it that we should be able to take as given that this thing that we have to do because we have no choice. And actually if you take even a slightly little bit more positive take on it or positive spin on it. The way I often describe it is really, if we're lucky and healthy, we get to spend most of our lives doing some sort of like employment. Right? Because there's a lot of folks who would like to be working who for whatever reason cannot. So if we're lucky and healthy, we spend most of our lives in some sort of employment. And for some people that is like a prison sentence because the organizations that are available to them or they happen to be working with or for are just fucking miserable. And for others, I think, you know, for me and for you, like it's fun. Like it's, it's a, it's a, it's really a playground to do, to experience a lot of the best aspects of human life flow and contributing to something bigger than yourself and like collaborating with other people. And why does that have to be the aberration that like, oh, if you're really lucky you get the good experience. Like why can't that be just like the default for everyone?
- [10:04]
A
Yeah, I love that. And I thought a lot this morning as I was prepping for this episode about this sort of like antagonistic view that sometimes comes up in the anti work discussions and subculture. You know, there can be a bit of a like sellout flag waved. I'm like, you know, I am of the generation where selling out was just a sin.
- [10:29]
B
The worst thing you could do.
- [10:30]
A
The worst thing you can do.
- [10:31]
B
How dare you?
- [10:33]
A
Yeah, but that was back when we all thought that like everyone was going to be able to buy houses and afford to like have children. And now selling out doesn't seem so bad because there's no alternative. But Actually, my point is, I was thinking a lot about this because I feel like in a lot of the rhetoric it's like, don't work for Amazon. And I'm like, okay, look, there are large companies that are extractive and horrible and toxic and all of the wealth and all of the stability flows up to the top at the expense of everyone else's safety and comfort. That is true. There are also nonprofits and art galleries and startups that are equally despicable in terms of the experience that their employees have, where because of their mission orientation or their dependence on funding or their slim margins, they don't provide benefits, they don't take care of employees. They rely very heavily on either the coolness and the content or the mission of the organization to also be like, you're lucky to be here.
- [11:38]
B
Well, and in some ways I think that's more despicable than like, at least they're honest about it. Like, we're here to make it.
- [11:43]
A
You know what you're getting.
- [11:44]
B
Yeah, like, like it was very clear. But like, you know, some nonprofit that is here to change the world and they're going to treat you like shit the whole time and you're supposed to feel good about it. That really rubs me the wrong way 100%.
- [11:56]
A
And so I've taken this posture my entire career and I still believe in it. And I've had a lot of arguments, particularly with like friends and people outside of my working life over the years where they're like, basically, given that you have more optionality than other people, why do you participate in this broken system? And by broken system, like they're talking about capitalism in America. Because I have Fortune 500 clients and because I work at the top of those houses. And basically the tidy answer to that, that is just a warm bath for the ego is like, well, if I help those systems become incrementally better blast radius for the employees, one CEO of a 10,000 person company or 100,000 person company changing their mind about work and creating humane conditions has a lot more effect than me going and working as the CEO of a six person nonprofit. Probably. That's great. That feels very tidy. That feels really rolls right off the tongue. The truth is closer to it's all fucked. And I think that depending on who you are and where you are, you have to choose what fucked arena you want to play in. Yeah, it's all bad. It's all bad. And it's not bad because people are bad. It's bad because we have 150 years of designed for extraction. And we are living in an oligarchy in this country. That's why it's bad. It's bad because there's no accountability for CEOs, and a tiny, tiny percentage of Americans are participating in the stock market. It's bad for a whole bunch of reasons. My point is, I have always in my career been very mindful and very choiceful about the bad. And there were times in my career where I was like, I want to someday buy a home, and I'm gonna put up with these fucking maniacs for two years to get two bonuses with one extra zero than I've ever had in my bank account so that I can buy that home. That, like, I will never criticize a person for being like, I, too, have to survive in this system, and I, too, am going to do what I can do. And once one is instability or can sort of see the system and have some influence, then I do feel like there is some pressure, at least for me, I feel some pressure to do something good with it and to not only engage with people who are monsters and be like, you're doing great, Jeff. Just keep stealing from your hourly employees. Like, I do feel like when you get to a certain point, then it is your job to hold a mirror up to whatever extent your privilege allows.
- [14:55]
B
Yeah, No, I love that. And when you were talking about how, you know, things are fucked, I wanted to take it actually one step further, because the ultimate level of fucked that we all have to deal with is that we're all going to die.
- [15:07]
A
So true.
- [15:08]
B
The absurdity of life is a thing that we all have in common. And I think through a certain lens, that's obviously very dire and can kind of like, freeze you in place. And I think the other side, I think, that I have been embracing more and more is it's actually really freeing to know, like, we all end up at the same spot. And the choices that we make leading up to that final moment, like, they in some ways, like, matter a lot less. So not in a nihilistic way, but, like. So I had this professor in grad school. He's a guy who wrote Flow, and he gave a talk in one of our early classes talking about attention and. And how in a, like, a given second of paying attention, there's, like, eight bits of information that you can attend to moment to moment, just as a person. And if you did just some, like, extrapolative math leading, okay, so I can handle this amount of information in this amount of time. And I live for roughly this long you basically have kind of a number which is the total amount of information that you could attend to in a given life.
- [16:18]
A
I love this. It's like your bank account of information totally. There's like a cap to process on
- [16:23]
B
like how much you can process in your entire life. And the moment to moment experience of how you process that limited amount of information is your life. It is the entirety of the experience. So that was Sam Sperlin or is, you know, was Rodney Evans. And it just brought home to me that like attention truly is all we really have moment to moment to determine what the quality of our life is. And we go back to my first point about like everybody needs to work in some capacity, the vast majority of us and the power that our organizations have to either respect or much more commonly utterly disrespect our attention. And it, it takes like a much more ethics focused tone for, for me it's like the org design work now is like, how are we going to help people live good lives or are we going to kind of destroy them along the way in order to see some more money in our bank account?
- [17:27]
A
I mean, I think this is what people who do employee experience are trying to get at. But usually it doesn't work that well. But what if the fundamental question was are we designing work so that people are spending their attention unworthy things?
- [17:47]
B
Yeah.
- [17:47]
A
Like how much would that change a bunch of the kinds of interactions that we see people have all damn day?
- [17:56]
B
Yeah. And it's not like, oh, like I can only spend my attention on the loftiest of like ideas or whatever. Because I think it actually comes down to this other thing that has really been burning me up recently, which is the realization that I think like I spent enough time around really bureaucratic organizations where the moral injury that I am perceiving people having to experience working in a system that just flat out doesn't work. So I'm not even talking about like what the company does or like the impact that they're having on the world. That totally set that aside. That's a different kind of ethical conversation I'm talking about. I am forced to spend eight hours a day here. And the primary way that I experience this organization is just utter incompetence. Like in order for to do something that is incredibly simple, I have to jump through three hoops that make no goddamn sense. And I know that I'm a smart man. I know this doesn't make any sense. And the first time I had to do it, I probably tried to put up a bit of A fight and be like, oh, why do we have to do it this way? Like, can I just do this? Like, And I had it so drilled out of me. And that is the predominant way that I experience this organization. I think that, like, is psychologically harmful to people. Like, to be forced to interact with a system that just straight up doesn't work. Because I think most of us have this psychological need to contribute to a system that actually works. Like, you can see your effort turn into outputs that, like, are making things happen. And I think a lot of the work design that we see in these organizations are I put in a lot of effort into a completely black box with where that effort just goes away forever. Yeah, that's a hard way to work and live.
- [19:43]
A
I think it's hard way to spend most of your waking hours is just on ephemeral nonsense. Most of which has some root in a lack of trust or someone's ego. Yeah, I mean, you know, I always used to say, like, bureaucracy is just a function of mistrust. Like, every bit of sludge added into any kind of workflow where one might do good work is probably because someone experienced an ego injury at some point and added that bit of friction in order to make themselves feel better. I think it's a really interesting point, Sam and I. I also am reflecting on so many conversations that I've had, truly across the board. This has happened with people I've coached. It has happened with people who are clients of ours. It has happened with people who have moved on from the ready, who I speak to, where there is this period of time when someone sort of stops, like, just consuming the system around them and gets a little bit of perspective of what the whole thing is really designed for and what it's really doing. And they go like, oh, I don't like that. Like, I don't. I don't want to do the thing that you're describing. Like, now that I can see it, I want to opt out of it. And then because life is hard, they convince themselves that they can live with that dissonance indefinitely. And usually that conversation sounds like, I'm just gonna keep my head down, push through, because it's five years to retirement, I need this security. My kids are going to college. It's just as bad in the other place. I might get promoted next year. There's usually some very intellectual justification for what's going on in our heart, which is, I'm wasting my life and it's hurting my feelings.
- [21:35]
B
Yeah, well, and I've seen that even in folks senior enough in an organization that you would think they have tran like gone beyond that they have transcended.
- [21:44]
A
No, it's worse.
- [21:44]
B
The very top of the organization has often, I mean obviously in most organizations the most power and also some of the most learned helplessness folks that I've ever worked with in my career.
- [21:58]
A
Yeah, I mean I have a. This is maybe first hot take of the episode Hot take zone. I have a very spicy theory about why that is. I feel like when you are at the top of the house and you are making so much more money than you probably deserve, like, let's just be honest. Yeah, I don't think that CEOs should make more than like $10 million. Like I just show me a person who is actually. Whatever. We'll talk about that later. CEOs just get paid to fail up constantly in a way that I think is disgusting. While their line workers have to take three buses and hold two jobs and not have health insurance.
- [22:37]
B
Like it's if only we could all aspire to be a failed CEO.
- [22:41]
A
I mean, no better job in America right there than just like a middle aged white guy who fucked up. I'll take it. I mean, somebody call me, call me. I'm on my up your company. My point being actually if we just don't like paint these people as villains because I fundamentally think again, this is a system thing, not an individual thing. When you're at that altitude of a company, and I would consider that altitude anywhere, that you are making enough money that like you have a lot of options, like you could probably quit, you could probably say fuck it and just opt out. I feel like those people have to do a lot of reinforcing work so that the truth of the situation does not seep in and infect their brains. And what I mean by that is if I'm the new CEO of Target and I'm going to make. I'm just guessing because I actually don't know what his comp package is, but let's just guess, it's like $60 million this year. I better believe that, like I am a magical unicorn. This is the way it has to work, that money is justified because no one else on earth can do what I do. My job is not to question the quality of my life or my employee's life. It is to, without thinking critically, keep blinders on and prop up this system that is making me rich.
- [24:16]
B
Yeah.
- [24:17]
A
And I think it's very difficult if a system has afforded you a lot of the trappings that capitalism promises. US money, positional power, a lot of reporting relationships, a private jet, I don't know, whatever your thing is. I think it's very difficult to have a critical perspective of that system. And so when that dissonance creeps in, I think it's almost like. It almost becomes work to just be like, shut up. No, I don't want to hear about how these people don't have childcare and their little babies are at home alone in an ice storm. I want to hear about how happy the shareholders are this quarter and how I'm going to get a bonus because I cannot hold these two truths in my mind at the same time.
- [25:08]
B
Yeah.
- [25:08]
A
I don't honestly know psychologically what it must take to do that professionally as your job.
- [25:15]
B
$60 million.
- [25:16]
A
Imagine it's hard. 60. $60 million. No, but, like, how do you do it? Like, how does one. How does one.
- [25:25]
B
Yeah, well.
- [25:27]
A
And the reason I'm pointing to compensation specifically is because when we talk about the ethical case for organizational design and a lot of the way that work design could be better requires actual investment in humans and training and slack and systems and benefits and other things. And the answer is always, no, there isn't any. And actually there is, but it's held in a very specific altitude of the company.
- [25:52]
B
Yeah, there's something about what you just described there, and I don't know what the number is. For me, I'm sure everybody has, like, a different number, but, you know, the concept of, like, fuck you money, you know, get so much money that you can just kind of do what you want. I feel like Most of these CEOs and often quite senior folks in large organizations have so much beyond fuck you money.
- [26:13]
A
So much.
- [26:14]
B
And they never use the fuck you move on it.
- [26:17]
A
No.
- [26:18]
B
And it's easy for me to sit here and be like, if I had fuck you money, I would be saying fuck you left and right. And maybe, I don't know, I feel like I haven't had fuck you money. Although I've, you know, certainly made more money than many folks, and I've been very fortunate in that way. So part of me is like, oh, would I even know that I had fuck you money if I had it? I would like to say yes. I'd like to say, you know, I haven't actually experienced that yet. And then when I do, I would know it. But what's the point of gaining so much power in an organization and just in life and all of those, you know, kind of comforts that $60 million and beyond can bring you and just never doing anything with it. Never doing anything with like an ethical flavor or moral tinge to it because you're playing the capitalism game. Like, I just can't wrap my mind around that sort of psychology.
- [27:10]
A
I can't either. And there are so few outliers.
- [27:14]
B
Is this why we don't run Fortune 100 companies, Rodney? Right now?
- [27:18]
A
Yeah, 100%. I couldn't be good at it because, I mean, partially because I think it would be very difficult for a lot of us to not opt out if, you know, if all of those conditions presented themselves. But actually more than that, I think a lot of people who are working at that altitude, they have gotten to that place because they are so wired not to ask the question what is enough? They're so wired for growth.
- [27:46]
B
Growth at all costs.
- [27:47]
A
Growth at all costs.
- [27:48]
B
Gotta grow, gotta grow. If you're not growing, you're dying.
- [27:50]
A
Growth of the stock price, growth of the comp package. Just more. And this is the lie that capitalism has sold us just. And, and as a country, we have just bought hook, line and sinker that more is ultimately good for all of us. And it's not like more is good on paper for a small group of people who are unconscious. And then it sucks for everybody else because in order for that small group of people to have more, it means that everybody else has to have less.
- [28:30]
B
Yeah.
- [28:31]
A
And to me, this is in part why a lot of the best case studies that we see that I would say people have taken the ethical path in terms of work design, are in privately held companies.
- [28:43]
B
Yeah.
- [28:44]
A
You know, this is the reason that you read about a company that has always been even very, very large companies that are like, you know, family businesses, generational, private, like, like Mars. Like. You read about a company like that and it's like it is familial. It is like people do really talk about the culture as being supportive and collective and collaborative and kind. And like, I think it's hard to do that when you're publicly traded because the only game is more. And I don't know how you make the ethical case unless it is directly related to more.
- [29:24]
B
Yeah, I think that's totally fair. You know, as I was thinking about this episode and kind of doing some, some light research, you know, I, I read somewhere and I don't remember where, but this idea that in capitalism we basically ignore massive negative externalities in order to work, totally ignore the impact that you're having on the world or your communities or the people. There's obviously no monetary impact for Those things. And because we can basically ignore these externalities, we can make the money kind of make sense and work on the balance sheet. And I wonder if the whole kind of like triple bottom line idea of if that could become more and more of the norm and actually needing to account for the impact that you have in the world and the people who work for it starts to shift the actual numbers in like a capitalism sort of sense that you start to care about that stuff a little bit more. Because as long as you can basically ignore massive costs, then like why would you do anything about them if you are of that persuasion?
- [30:30]
A
What's the triple bottom line?
- [30:32]
B
Yeah, triple bottom line. Basically the idea that we are looking at more than just did we or do we make money or not, you know, the profit aspect of it, but also incorporating the impact on society, impact on the planet. And like once you have incorporated those numbers into the extent that you can put numbers on them, that is the true impact that you had. And like the people on planet side are usually pretty ignored in typical capitalism.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, that makes, that makes sense to me.
- [31:07]
B
So when I was trying to put on my hat around like, all right, what's the like skeptical take on this whole topic of conversation? I mean like, obviously holding capitalism aside is a huge like impact on everything that we're talking about. But the other thing, the other kind of critique that I think you can make is like, whose ethics, whose morals? Like the moral relativism of like, oh, what you think is good, like that's what we should be doing. And I was trying to challenge myself to come up with like, what are a handful of values or principles that feel non controversial. And I'm wondering if you have any that kind of come to mind for you that would be kind of like held no matter what. If an organization was doing this well, was being ethical, being moral, what are some of the principles or values that they're likely adhering to? And I have a few if you want me to get us rolling. And I think you've actually mentioned a couple of mine already through some of the things that you talked about.
- [32:08]
A
The ones that are coming to mind for me are very like sort of operational. So you start because I'm not sure that I have a principal level idea, but I have very like operational level ideas that I'm compelled by.
- [32:21]
B
Well, two that you kind of already talked about that I had on my list here. One, I think in general transparency, maybe not in all things, all the time, but general, a general belief that being transparent is important. I think is likely to show up in that, particularly because of the second thing that you brought up. I think you talked about this earlier, making power more explicit and visible. And you know where that I came up with was, like, contestable. Like, can we talk about power and, like, where the power lives in this organization? Because I don't think what I'm saying is, like, we are in a completely flat. Nobody has power over anybody else. I don't think that's a thing that's really all that possible. But I think there are ethical ways to, like, have relationships where certain people have more power in certain domains than others. And we're like, all okay, and it's transparent and, like, it actually helps us do better work.
- [33:13]
A
Yeah, I like that. I think that there's something in my mind that is around policy standardization that's like, I don't necessarily understand why the vacation benefits, health benefits, severance benefits are so different by level in an organization. And it's like, as a leader of an organization, if the basket of rewards or, you know, incentives that your lowest level employee gets makes you feel like you might have a panic attack because it's so thin and insufficient to have any stability, that's probably not good. Like, I'm not saying that, like, the CEO and like, the person at the register have to make the same money or have exactly the same things, but I have some kind of, like, principle in my head that's like, the spread shouldn't be so big. Like, it shouldn't be that there are two people working for the same company and one of them commutes every day on a jet to his office where he has insisted that everyone come into work and someone else is experiencing medical bankruptcy. Yeah, I'm like, those two people shouldn't work at the same company. I just. I just feel like there is a spectrum that can still be quite wide in terms of, you know, power not being equally distributed, but doesn't just feel like, inhumane. Like, you're not recreating a massive wealth gap under the ceiling of your own organization, where it's like, I should make a hundred times what the low is. Like, pick a multiple that's fucking reasonable and be like, no one should have more than 10 times more. Like, no one should have more than 50 times more. It shouldn't be like, you know, the CEO wins a thousand times more than the. Like. That's just so gross. It's so gross. And again, just to like, belabor this point, we are talking about this because of, like, the ethical case for work design. But part of why this, like, really lights me up and pisses me off is because so many publicly held companies that were around have cut out so much fat that they can't do anything interesting. They can't hire the people they need to do good AI experimentation and they can't have the off site that they need to actually like, slay their dragons. And they can't invest in the office redesign that would actually create the kind of space that their employees would want to come into. Because all of the money has been funneled to this one very small group of people. And now there's nothing left to do. Good work, design. And so partially I am mad about it because it's disgusting and I don't know how some people sleep at night. And partially I'm mad about it because I'm like, this is why your company is garbage, is because you've, you've taken all of the like muscle and ligament and fat and it's just fucking bones clacking around. And that's why it feels like the soul is gone and it doesn't work. And so, so much of my fieriness about it isn't even just like about morals. It's just like, you can't run a good thriving organization that can evolve when all of the resources and all of the power flow in one direction and are concentrated there.
- [37:04]
B
Totally. Are you familiar with the political theorist John Rawls?
- [37:09]
A
No.
- [37:10]
B
Because you just, I think you, you described his theory of justice for like how society should be set up in a. And I think in a very similar way. So basically he has this idea and I'm doing this off of the dome from my undergrad political science classes.
- [37:24]
A
Nice. But this idea to Sam's academic career today, I'm loving it.
- [37:28]
B
The props.
- [37:29]
A
Berlin's in the house.
- [37:30]
B
The veil of ignorance basically being like, if we think about how society could be set up in terms of like, who is doing well based on like various demographics, you'd want to set this society up in such a way where if you were randomly placed into that society, would you be okay with kind of the opportunities?
- [37:52]
A
I love this.
- [37:54]
B
And you just kind of describe that in an organization, if we have massive disparity between the lowest and the highest paid, would you be okay going into that organization and being randomly assigned a role? Maybe you get super lucky and you're the CEO making a thousand times more than everybody. Or maybe you're the janitor who has to have three jobs to piece together a life.
- [38:14]
A
Right.
- [38:14]
B
I think ideally we're trying to Create organizations where, yeah, there's variety in there. Like you may want to fall on certain side or, or not, but you wouldn't be like absolutely devastated to land in the lowest part of the organization. I think that's not a great way to mental model. Yeah. John Rawls, we can thank, thank him for that.
- [38:34]
A
Thank. I mean, I think I made it up on this podcast.
- [38:36]
B
You made it up. You're right. It's called, it's called the John Rawls Rodney Evans theory.
- [38:40]
A
Two people can have the same great idea. The sort of principle for here is like, know the spread, commit to a spread that's reasonable and then design accordingly.
- [38:52]
B
Totally. Yeah. I love that. A couple other ones that I jotted down as good principles are, you know, we've been, I think, poking at them through our conversation, but just to say them out loud, there's something about, you know, treating people as ends in themselves I think is important. That's a lot of what we're hearing. People are not just means to like, accomplishing things in the world. They should be respected as, as ends in themselves. And that shows up in lots of different ways. A lot of the different people positive stuff that we have talked about before because I think the other thing not to belabor, but you can go back and listen to our whole people positive episode to see that we're not talking about everybody being nice all the time. Like, if your takeaway from this conversation is like, Rodney and Sam think, like everybody should be like getting along all the time. Like, that's not what I'm talking about.
- [39:37]
A
What we're, we're rarely described as nice, either of us, by anyone. So just to be clear, that's not the aim.
- [39:43]
B
Yeah, it's there's just like, there's a, I don't know, I mean, it's, it's nice when people are getting along. Like, it's more fun than not. But just, just the sign that people aren't getting along is not like evidence that you're inherently in a immoral or unethical sort of system, but treating people as ends in themselves. And then one that I've, that I really am becoming more and more, I think, militant about is that I think if your organization doesn't have some sort of like, profit share, like, what are you doing? Like, if you are contributing to an organization that has, you know, is making a profit and there's no way at all for you to participate in that. I don't know. I, I, I'm sure there are situations where like, it's Just not feasible or whatever. But my default stance would be we have some sort of profit share unless there's really good reasons that we can't figure it out or do it for some reason.
- [40:31]
A
Yeah, I love that. I agree with you. Another one that occurred to me. I've really been on one lately. I think it's because I've been spending more time on the Internet than I usually do. Like, I've been consuming social media, which I don't usually do because it's bad for me. But man, I really hate how now, like everything feels like it is sponsored by or in collaboration with or part of some kind of commercial transaction. Just like everything that there is. And this is related to a principle for an organization because, like, in a living organization you should do some things that are just for fun or you should do some things just because you fucking feel like it. Like, it should not be that in a company, every moment of every day must be tied to some kind of important commercial output. A, because like, that's not how human beings do great things and B, because that's not how human beings are. Like, we just are not robots, though. I know, you know, we're on the precipice of being replaced by them, like soon enough. Although, you know, according to a lot of what I read over the weekend, the AI also wants to be treated with some empathy and respect that it is not currently experiencing. But it's like I had, I had a moment about this. So we had retreat last week and we were in Durham and we played a game that is like commonly known as Mafia. The version we played is like some kind of werewolf something. But anyway, it's a really fun. Have you played this game? It's like a role playing game.
- [42:19]
B
I think so. The Deception game.
- [42:21]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And before we did it, I had a moment where I, like, this was my idea to have a game night and where I almost wanted to like, explain how like, playing games together is really good for like increasing empathy and blah, blah. And then I was like, wait a minute, these are not people who are asking me for receipts about this instinct. No one is questioning the value of us doing something fun together. Calm down. But like, even I feel so programmed to justify the commercial reason for what we're doing. And I have more flexibility and freedom to not do that than like basically anyone on earth. And I still fall into the trap of being like, well, you know, if we spend an hour on Werewolf at the expense of something else, like, is that a bad idea? I think a principle For a company is like every single thing does not have to have a business reason. Sometimes you can do things in a system full of humans that are just human for the sake of humanity. And the rest of that sentence doesn't have to be so that you get why.
- [43:33]
B
Totally. As a small example of that, I've caught myself at least six or seven times in this episode almost following whatever we were talking about with the roi. Reason totally for it. I almost just did it right here. Like the idea that, you know, there's in organizations where we're doing creative work that's never been done before, the idea that you could like define every small thing that needs to be done now and even into the future is just insanity. But that, that is again, looking at it through the lens of like, how are we most productive? How do we survive as an organization? And I agree with you, you can just do fun shit sometimes because human
- [44:13]
A
beings like that everything does not have to be in service of a growth related outcome. Yeah, it just doesn't. It just doesn't. Sometimes you can just do things because they're right or because they're fun or because you just fucking feel like it because you're a grown ass adult and you have some authorship over your experience on this planet.
- [44:34]
B
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. All right, as usual, let's spend a couple minutes here at the end just talking about some specific ideas that folks could potentially run with if they heard anything that was interesting over the last 40 minutes or so. So Rodney, what's your first idea for kind of bringing some of this to life?
- [44:56]
A
My first idea is because a lot of people who listen to this show are involved in change in some way. They are leading a change initiative or they're the leader funding a change initiative or they're the PMO tracking a change initiative. My first idea, because a change initiative is a container where a lot of trade offs are made and where the ROI thing comes up a lot, right? Like it's harder to sort of question the status quo than when you're in the big transformation to be like, what are we doing here and why? So I have two invitations if you are somewhere around change. One is what are we doing here and why? Like actually understand why this change? Why now? Is it just an ROI play? Is there something else going on here? What are we designing for? Let's like really get dug into that and see if there is something more than just like dollars that are related. And two is don't accept performative change initiatives and people call us to do this work. I see too many change initiatives that are like, we just need to comms this thing. Right. And jam it down people's throats so that they believe the party line. And basically, we don't lose productivity from them, and they don't become distracted by this thing that they don't want. And so we need your help convincing them that this thing we're doing is in their best interest. I'm being a little bit, like, hyperbolic, but it is kind of not that hyperbolic, honestly.
- [46:41]
B
Yeah.
- [46:42]
A
And so I just feel like if you are in and around a change initiative, be on the lookout for, like, is this actually experimentation leading to a new state, or is the initiative some sort of propaganda campaign to get people to shut up in color? And if it's the latter, see what you can do to agitate that. Because a, that's not how change happens. And balance. Ethically woof.
- [47:11]
B
Ethically woof. There's the title of our episode today. All right, so mine. I've been pretty critical of lots of fictional and real organizations over the course of the last hour or so, but I do think there is an impulse in every organization for what we were talking about here.
- [47:32]
A
Totally.
- [47:32]
B
It usually shows up in some sort of values or principles. Every organization seems to have these, and the ones where these are treated as design constraints are the organizations that are actually taking these seriously. So I think an interesting starting point, if you're trying to kind of check your organization against some of these ideas that we've been talking about, is to look at whatever existing values and principles you have and do a bit of an audit around how is this showing up in the. In the organization? How is it not showing up? You know, if we really, really believed this value that has been written down here, what would we have done more of over the past, you know, 18 months? What would we definitely not have done over the last 18 months? What would we have done differently? I think that is an interesting playground for an initial take at figuring out how to bring more of these ideas of ethics and morality into. Into an organization. Organization.
- [48:33]
A
I love that My last thought is sort of related, which is where you see the divergence of what a leader or an organizational statement says is important, says is ethical, says is principled, and their behavior, like, don't get gaslit by these humans in systems. And it's all related. Right. The system is designed to do what it does, which is mostly to get allegiance from the people who steer it to produce what it's supposed to produce, which is money for someone I think sometimes, even if we end up conforming and even if we make choices to work in ways that we don't think are optimal or we don't think are ethical, we can still choose to not be gaslit by the people and to the environment around us to some extent. Like, we can still hold our own sovereignty. That because I'm working for a boss who believes in, like, hustle culture and like, whatever996-garbage they read about that morning on their fucking tech bro Twitter, you do not have to agree. You might decide to conform because you want what that gets you. No shade to that. We all do what we do. But, like, you don't have to believe in that nonsense just because you want the money or you want the equity or you want the position or you want the venture fund. You can still be like, that shit's gross and unethical. And also, I want these things. And you don't necessarily have to believe in unethical behavior just because a person who has more power than you believes in it. Even though that's very, very easy to fall into in companies.
- [50:33]
B
Yeah, that's like, well said. All right, should we wrap here?
- [50:38]
A
Let's wrap it up. Sam, Alan.
- [50:39]
B
All right, as you all know, we're looking for new topics for the show. So if you have have a pattern or an idea, just a thought that you think would be fun for an episode, shoot us a note@podcasttheready.com this show
- [50:53]
A
was engineered by Taylor Marvin and produced by our friend Jack Van Amberg. At work with the READY is created by the ready, where we help organizations around the world change the way that they work. Thank you so much for listening to us.