52. Welcome to the Liminal Space (Buckle Up!)

Summary

At Work with The Ready – Episode 52: "Welcome to the Liminal Space (Buckle Up!)"

Hosts: Rodney Evans & guest co-host Sam Rothkopf
Release Date: July 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Rodney Evans welcomes Sam Rothkopf as co-host to discuss the profound shifts in organizational strategy and leadership required in today’s hyper-complex, volatile world. Drawing on their extensive consulting experiences, Rodney and Sam unpack the challenges organizations face in the current "liminal space"—a transitional, ambiguous era where old playbooks no longer work and new paradigms are emerging. They focus on evolving mindsets, the erosion of traditional authority and trust, the role of AI, and how companies must build the muscle to both sense and rapidly respond to change rather than merely withstand it.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Check-in: Changing Minds and Authenticity

00:49 – 05:05

• Check-in Question: “What is something you've completely changed your mind about?”
  • Rodney's Answer: Embracing psychological flexibility in life and leadership; it's okay and even necessary to change your mind when presented with new information.
    • Quote:

    “Life is just a series of corrections. It's fine. So I think my macro answer is, I've changed my mind about changing my mind.”
    — Rodney Evans (02:00)

  • Sam's Answer: She recounted a shift from hating her naturally curly hair (and hiding it for work) to fully embracing it after a client’s unexpected feedback about authenticity.
    • Quote:

    “When you show up authentically, you always are better and more potent and interesting.”
    — Sam Rothkopf (04:41)

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2. The "Liminal Space": Navigating an Era of Relentless Change

06:09 – 16:41

• Sam frames the "moment we're in" as unprecedented in terms of the pace and complexity of change. Both at macro (global) and micro (organizational) levels, volatility has grown so constant that it’s eroding people's capacity and tolerance for grappling with complexity.
  • Clients' new expectation: "Just tell me the answer," bypassing deep, collaborative thinking and whiteboarding.
    • Quote:

    “I don't have, not even just time. I do not have the capacity to take on doing the really hard work of the deep thinking. I need it to get shortchanged.”
    — Sam Rothkopf (07:12)

  • The pandemic of seeking shortcut solutions is compounded by AI, which sets new norms around never starting from scratch.
  • Rodney points out the paradox: The time when deep thinking is needed most is precisely when leaders are most desperate to avoid it.
    • Quote:

    “At the very moment where those of us who have systemic power should be doing more deep thinking than ever, we're just like whack a mole. Just like somebody gimme a quick fix to something that gives me an ounce of dopamine and a minute of rest.”
    — Rodney Evans (09:01)

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3. AI as a Force Multiplier—But Not a Saviour

10:09 – 14:44

• AI accelerates direction but can exacerbate broken systems. Rodney and Sam warn that while AI brings efficiency, if layered on top of dysfunctional systems (“building a five star hotel on landfill”), it simply makes problems worse, not better.
  • Quote:

    “AI sort of gives us the ability to like build a five star hotel. But currently most organizations are trying to build it on like landfill.”
    — Rodney Evans (11:14)

• There is widespread organizational fear, paralysis, and erosion of trust, especially as leaders fail to provide meaningful direction in turbulent contexts.
• The classic “five-year plan” is now obsolete—future planning must become adaptive and short-range.

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4. Erosion of Trust, Authority, and the Changing Role of Leadership

14:44 – 17:57

• Multiple forces—societal, generational, informational—are converging to undermine traditional trust in leadership.
• Many executives are caught in an impossible bind: Their experience and conviction—once prized—may now be liabilities. Some freeze, refusing to make decisions for fear of being wrong.
  • Quote:

    “You've got to have strong opinions loosely held. We have to still be making and testing hypotheses.”
    — Rodney Evans (17:24)

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5. From “Enduring Change” to “Benefiting from Change” (Windmill Metaphor)

17:57 – 22:00

• Sam introduces the “windmill” metaphor: Organizations should design to benefit from volatility and change rather than merely withstand it.
  • “You need to be the windmill. How are you using this resource—the resource being constant, consistent change—to fuel the engine, instead of be the thing that we're always pointing at as the reason that the strategy isn't working?”
    — Sam Rothkopf (18:02)
• Experimentation alone is not enough; discernment about which experiments actually matter becomes critical. AI makes rapid experimentation easier, but indiscriminate experimentation leads to burnout and chaos.
• The real edge is in being built to benefit from change, not just survive or endure it.

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6. Building “Sensing” and Discernment Muscles

22:00 – 27:12

• Organizations need faster, more structured practices for investigation, decision, and action—and a continuous loop for assessing outcomes and pivoting.
• Rodney shares a client’s approach: Leaders must “find the spark” (unique, emergent opportunities) amidst a landscape in constant flux, then rapidly validate and scale it.
  • “Energetically, the difference between a CEO trying to make a plan for the future that is like correct and coherent and a CEO trying to find a quiet signal... is very different.”
    — Rodney Evans (25:11)

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7. Case Study: IKEA’s AI Workforce Pivot

27:15 – 30:00

• IKEA is celebrated for retraining rather than laying off call center staff displaced by an AI bot—turning them into remote interior design consultants, a customer request for years. This move generated $1.4B in new revenue and exemplifies agility and creativity in using change as fuel.
  • “They retrained those people... to be remote interior design consultants... and it generated $1.4 billion, I believe, in the first year.”
    — Rodney Evans (28:44)
• The key takeaway: Approaching AI as a strategic enabler can unlock untapped value, rather than simply cutting costs.

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8. Innovation, Experimentation & The Role of Creativity

33:45 – 35:30

• Rapid experimentation is valuable—but real impact comes from creative application and rethinking how core insights are applied within organizations.
• Question: How can your “spark” be uniquely leveraged—not just copied as a “fast follow”?
• Zara’s approach to retail supply chain innovation is referenced as a model of targeted, creative execution rather than wholesale overhaul.

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9. Atomization over Monolithic Planning

35:30 – 37:03

• Traditional comprehensive analysis and planning (“monolithic depth”) no longer work. The new approach is “atomization”—doing just enough sensing, planning, and trying, in small iterations, to stay ahead of the relentlessly shifting environment.

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10. “From > To” at The Ready — What’s Changed?

37:03 – 42:26

• Experimentation is no longer enough—discernment is the new bottleneck. Organizations must determine which things matter most to experiment on.
• Execution IS strategy now: The ability to execute at pace is itself a competitive advantage, not just downstream from strategy.
  • “Building an ability to actually execute at pace is in itself a strategy in this liminal space. We aren't going to be able to set a three year strategy. We need to be setting a three month strategy...”
    — Sam Rothkopf (39:04)
• Smooth, fast, collaborative execution must be designed-in—not isolated as an operational afterthought.

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11. Treating Volatility as Resource, Not Threat

42:26 – 49:10

• The core mindset shift: Volatility should be embraced as fuel for innovation and opportunity, not as a threat. To do so, leaders must practice non-attachment, openness, self-work, and trust in others.
  • “We need to be treating volatility as a resource rather than a threat. It needs to be seen as the thing that's powering the organization, not the thing that is in the way.”
    — Sam Rothkopf (42:26)
• This transition is difficult, as fear and survival instincts inhibit creativity and discernment. Leaders must ground themselves deeply to navigate and capitalize on ambiguity.
  • “Our job as leaders is to do the work on ourselves and the work of non attachment required to be creative and to be like, liberated from our own egos and from our own plans and from our own correctness. But that's some really hard work.”
    — Rodney Evans (47:46)

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Memorable Quotes & Takeaways

• “Life is just a series of corrections.” — Rodney (02:00)
• “When you show up authentically, you always are better and more potent and interesting.” — Sam (04:41)
• “At the very moment where those with systemic power should be doing more deep thinking than ever, we're just like whack a mole.” — Rodney (09:01)
• “You need... to be the windmill. How are you using... constant, consistent change to fuel the engine?” — Sam (18:02)
• “Experimentation can happen so much more quickly now... [but] your ability to discern what are the important signals... is the really key part.” — Sam (19:26)
• “Building an ability to actually execute at pace is in itself a strategy in this liminal space.” — Sam (39:04)
• “We need to be treating volatility as a resource rather than a threat.” — Sam (42:26)

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Notable Timestamps

• Check-in stories: 00:49 – 05:05
• What's changed for clients in the last three years: 06:09 – 08:18
• The paradox of deep thinking vs. quick fixes: 08:18 – 10:09
• AI and compounding change: 10:09 – 12:54
• Trust and authority breakdown: 12:54 – 17:03
• Durable competitive advantage & windmill metaphor: 17:57 – 22:00
• From “finding the plan” to “finding the spark”: 23:43 – 26:17
• IKEA story: 27:15 – 30:00
• Creativity in applying insights: 33:45 – 35:30
• Atomization as strategy: 35:30 – 37:03
• ‘From > To’ at The Ready: 37:03 – 42:26
• Mindset shift (volatility = fuel): 42:26 – 49:10

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Summary Table: Shifts in Organizational Strategy

| Old Paradigm | New Paradigm | |----------------------------------------|---------------------------------------| | Five-year plans, linear roadmaps | Three-month strategies, rapid cycles | | Change as threat to mitigate | Change as fuel for growth | | Experimentation as a goal | Discernment to select valuable bets | | Siloed strategy and execution | Fast, collaborative execution is strategy | | Top-down authority and trust | Distributed, adaptive leadership | | Seeking “the answer” | Sensing and fanning sparks | | AI as cost-cutting tool | AI as a creative, value-creation tool | | Imitative “fast follows” | Unique, context-driven innovation |

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Final Thought

This episode offers a practical, candid, and slightly irreverent look at how organizations—and leaders—must shift their mindsets, strategies, and day-to-day behaviors to thrive in the liminal space. The future belongs to those who can continuously sense, discern, decide, and move—using volatility as their most vital resource.

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Transcript

[Sam Rothkopf]

Building an ability to actually execute at pace is in itself a strategy in this liminal space. Like, we aren't going to be able to set a three year strategy. We need to be setting a three month strategy, figuring out and discerning the right information to actually execute on.

[Rodney]

Welcome back to Orkwitharetti. For 10 years, we have been helping organizations, and over those 10 years, we've learned a lot about what makes change work, what makes it stick, what's really challenging and ephemeral about it. And you've probably noticed in recent episodes that we've been sort of making this nod to the fact that the world has changed and our work has changed and our clients and our thinking have changed, but we haven't totally brought you guys up to speed on our kind of like, new, improved, explicit theory of change and of what this work means and what organizations need now for this moment. And so today we are going to close that gap and we are going to make this journey very explicit and bring you all into it. And to help me do that, is someone who has been leading a lot of this work, really architecting so much of how the ready is growing and delivering our business. And that is Sam Rothkopf, and she is here with me today. Say hi, Sam. Yay.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Hi, Rodney. Very excited to be here. Longtime listener, first time co host. Excited to be stepping in for this episode.

[Rodney]

Yeah, absolutely. You guys are going to hear about Sam and what she's doing here and all of the things. But first we will check in and Sam will lead it for us.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Okay, check in. Question for today is what is something you've completely changed your mind about?

[Rodney]

I have changed my mind about changing my mind. So I used to feel like stewardship was so much about making clear decisions and holding the line on those things and sharing conviction and creating the same in others. And what I now respect a lot more is people who can be much more psychologically flexible and who feel like when presented with new information or the rotation of the globe one more time, they can just do a 180 on something. And I've changed my mind so much about so many things related to work, related to life in the last 18 months. And I used to feel away about that and feel like I had done something wrong or I had been wrong before, and now I'm like, life is just a series of corrections. It's fine. So I think my macro answer is, I've changed my mind about changing my mind.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Love that.

[Rodney]

What about you?

[Sam Rothkopf]

Gosh, my answer is so different, but I really love yours. So I've changed my mind and like, stick with me here on the story. I've changed my mind about my hair. So if you can't see me right now, I am so beautiful, glorious curly hair. And it's a big part of my brand as Rodney knows me. Know me for about three years and it's, it's just a big part of who I am. And you know, until I was about 25, I absolutely hated my hair. And I would straighten it every single day. And especially if I had client work or was deemed to be more professional one day, I would always show up. Pin straight hair, suit ready to rock. And I remember one day I had this like pivotal moment with a client which was like, in retrospect, a little weird. They probably didn't need to say this to me, but, you know, I showed up. It was my first time actually meeting their CEO. We'd been working together for six months. We had this like fabulous strategy that we were finally getting to the big guy. And I showed up in my suit with my, my straight hair and they were like, what are you doing? They were like, you look crazy. They're like, I didn't hire like the McKinsey consultant to come here looking like a McKinsey consultant. Like, you're Sam. And like that's, that's what makes you special, is like that you're not trying to be what everybody else is. And which again, maybe wasn't the best thing to be said right before I go into this meeting.

[Rodney]

Right. Like, talk about giving the yips. Jeez.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Uh huh.

[Rodney]

Get right in your head.

[Sam Rothkopf]

They're a complicated character for sure. It's like probably an HR violation, but I think the spirit of it was actually right and good, which is when you show up authentically, you always are better and more potent and interesting. And so, yeah, from then on out, I was like, all right, curly hair, don't care, I love it. We're going to do it to it. As John Roth might say.

[Rodney]

As John Roth might say. I love it. Okay, so today we are going to get into first kind of the moment that we're in and then how we're thinking about it and really tell you guys what we've changed our minds about. So just as a little bit of context, you know, in Sam's time, we've been working together for more than a year, but like officially and very formally, Sam joined in October, sorry, in October to really like co steward the ready with me. And a lot of the work that you did initially was just like getting out there and sort of forming your own opinion on the moment and the market and where the ready sits in the ecosystem. And this whole episode is not gonna be like totally total navel gazing about our own company. I think what is really interesting is your own assessment and interpretation of, to use death, finding language, the sky. And so I'm just going to start by asking you, like, tell us about the moment that we're in as you see it.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah. And I do think I've spent the majority of my time actually talking to clients and prospects since I've been here. As I've been trying to reposition and think about what is it that we do for people and why and companies, which has been fascinating because I do think things are really different now in the world of work in a way that, you know, three years ago, the pace of change was just not nearly what it is today. And I think that's a little bit of like a duh. Everyone knows change is constant. This is the thing that we hear all the time that's not really interesting. But I think what is interesting about it is that the amount of volatility happening from like the most macro level to the micro level at work is so persistent that it has reduced people's tolerance for even talking about or wanting to explore complexity. I've been in consulting in one way or another for more than 15 years. And I think this is the first time in my history I've had clients come and say, can you just give me the answer?

[Rodney]

Just fucking tell us.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Just tell me. I don't want a whiteboard with you. I don't. Which obviously I'm a whiteboard queen. Yeah, we love it. But I don't want to whiteboard with you. I don't want you to come to me without a straw man or an idea of what you think we need moving forward. We need to move faster at pace. And I actually want you to come with the answers. I don't have, not even just time. I do not have the capacity to take on doing the really hard work of the deep thinking. I need it to get shortchanged. And I think this is also in concert with AI actually, and how the adoption of AI is actually so prolific already in how we're working and thinking about things. The reason this connects is that people's expectation are that they never have to start from scratch anymore.

[Rodney]

Yep.

[Sam Rothkopf]

So that this idea of I don't have to start from scratch and I don't have time, energy, desire, or capacity to actually do the really hard systems thinking has led to a desire just for the answers.

[Rodney]

I'm literally just thinking about this as you're talking, but it's really paradoxical. Is that the word I want?

[Sam Rothkopf]

I think so. I think so.

[Rodney]

Let's go with it. I think it's paradoxical, ironic. I don't know. Someone will at me for sure using the wrong word. But I think to your point, it's not a moment like this feeling of compounding complexity and the way in which complexity actually begets more complexity. So it's like you cannot disaggregate climate change and global instability and conflict and sociopolitical considerations and the corporate landscape and AI regulation and data centers. Like these things, it's fucking turtles all the way down. And all of those things working and happening at the pace they're happening, just like it speeds up the flywheel on all of it. I say this because at the very moment where those of us who have systemic power should be doing more deep thinking than ever, we're just like whack a mole. Just like somebody gimme a quick fix to something that gives me an ounce of dopamine and a minute of rest.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah.

[Rodney]

My feeling is like you actually have to steer into this skid because too many people are doing the exact game that you're talking about where they're like, how do I get relief from from this and how do I get an answer and a quick fix? Or to be willfully ignorant, most of us are having to go against our instincts and actually find more space and do more sense making and think more about AI being a perfect example, the problems that we're trying to solve and things like this. So it's interesting that our human response to what we are sensing out there is exactly the opposite of what we probably need.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah. And just like the plus one on that too is that I think that as you've talked about in the past, AI speeds things up, but it doesn't change course for you. So whatever direction you were going, it will add fuel to that fire. So if your systems were already defunct and broken, which the majority are in organizations because they were built for a completely different era, like AI isn't going to come in and say actually this is the way that we do that, it's just going to keep doing that because it isn't a sentient thinking being, it's taking the information it has and keeps going with it, then I feel like people are looking at the car crash is even scarier for them to think about doing the Deep thinking because they see the acceleration. So it's like this compounding effect that's leading to I think a huge amount of fear as well as just paralyzation to actually make the move and do something brave and pivot in this moment versus just figure out how many tokens we can use as an organization. And like that's the strategy.

[Rodney]

Right? Well and I think to your point, the metaphor that came to my mind is like, you know, AI sort of gives us the ability to like build a five star hotel. But currently most organizations are trying to build it on like landfill. It's not great. It's like, well this is a trash heap and then we're going to just try to do something really cool on top. And that being said, like the empathetic side of me, as someone who works in a very small company that's able to do basically whatever the fuck we want is like this is a profound liminal space. And you and I sort of joke like regularly like welcome to the liminal space bitch is like my favorite current meme at the ready. But it's like if you are a scaled organization, if you are a company with a hundred million or a billion dollars in revenue, or you have a hundred or ten thousand or one hundred thousand employees, it's not that easy to just gut the fucking thing and like start over. And it's like we're seeing companies that are like basically rebuilding or building anew on the side in an AI first way. Yeah, not everyone can do that. Like not every organization is equipped to take it back to the studs because they have an existing customer base or they have an existing product stack or whatever. Like it is not a moment to be over simplified because all of these things are true at once. And I also think it's like quite understandable why all of our aperture is like just like desperate to shrink and be like what if there was one small problem I could solve instead of wrestling with the liminal space where nothing is clear and the future feels uncertain.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah, like it's very clear that the playbooks of yesterday, building a really comprehensive strategy, doing a five year plan, setting out a roadmap for the next three years and then like hitting those milestones that has been kind of defunct for a while but now it's just laughable when people are doing that. And there's this, there's no next playbook. So in that, in that liminal moment, executive teams are just at a bit of a loss for what am I supposed to do today? And it's really eroded trust of employees in that executive group. And I think that that too is like a microcosm example of what's happening at scale around the world. Like, all of these insights that I've gathered recently are both at that micro and macro, where it's like, people don't trust executive teams in the way that they used to. Because even if the economy feels like it's booming, we are in decline in a few different ways. And it's much easier to point and kind of complain when business isn't doing great. When business is doing great, people don't care as much about the decisions that are being made. But right now there's a lot of decisions being made that are impacting people's jobs. Cost of living is really difficult. The rest of people's lives are really hard. It's really hard to trust anything that's coming into your inbox or into your feed. So, like, the erosion of trust is, is huge across the board. And I think people are looking at executives and saying, well, the strategy you put together for our five year plan makes sense today, but three months from now it feels like it was made 10 years ago. So there's just a really interesting, I think, transformation happening in terms of how we look at authority and trust and think about authority as a species and definitely as an American workforce.

[Rodney]

Well, and I think what's interesting about that is again, it's like multiple forces combining, right? So you have younger generations that generally were socialized to question authority in a way that we were not. Like, we were told that grownups had answers and we just believed them. And also we didn't have social media to like, tell us otherwise. We were just like, I guess my mom's smart, I don't know. So we have like some generational shifts and also just like a lot more information symmetry than we used to have, where people in power just knew a lot of shit that the rest of the people didn't know. That's like, different. And then there is a skill set issue because a lot of executives like, are, you know, my age plus or minus a few years, and most were not socialized and developed with a particularly adaptive skill set. Most did grow up in, like the MBA landscape of you do your analysis, you find the right answer, you become Jack Welsh at ge. Like, forecast and delivery is the one, two punch of strategy and execution. And that's how you get the big job and like the private jet, you know. So like, we have a bunch of people who got to this place doing things that don't work anymore. And then we have a lot of workforce that's going like, hey, boss, it's not looking great out here. The fuck? And so there is a real credibility problem right now, and it's not a problem that, like, better PR is gonna solve. And there's some validity to it. Like, not some. There's a lot of validity to it. You know, like, I'm in a lot of rooms with executives that don't know what to do right now. And I don't totally think that's like, a talent problem or even a failure of imagination. It's that this moment calls for something that most people just don't have experience with and we're trained to do.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah. And I mean, even it harkens back to your. Actually, your answer on the checking question, which is, I also think these executives have been told that strength means conviction and not. And not going back on your decisions. And that is the opposite of the leadership posture that we know is going to be successful in the future.

[Rodney]

Totally. And I would also say what I'm seeing right now is. Is the opposite of that, too, where I'm seeing people in, like, the big job just not make decisions because they don't want to be wrong, because they can't have the conviction to fully assert like you're talking about, so they won't make a call at all. And I'm like, neither of these is a great color on you. Like, you've got to have strong opinions loosely held. We have to still be making and testing hypotheses. We. We can't sort of wait for the confetti to hit the floor. It's gonna be a while. So you have a really interesting take that everybody you say it to loves. And I am among the fans of this, that, like, this is sort of the job to be done right now. So tell us, like, what is the punchline for this moment?

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah, I mean, I think that we're in a moment where durable competitive advantage is now really just the ability to execute in complexity and that you need to, instead of building teams, businesses, processes that can bear change as it barrels down, you actually need to design to benefit from change. The metaphor that we sometimes use is you need kind of need to be the windmill. How are you using this resource? The resource being constant, consistent change to fuel the engine, instead of be the thing that we're always pointing at as the reason that the strategy isn't working. So it's really a continued exercise of being able to investigate, decide, and move, and then ascertain whether or not you make changes. So I think that we used to talk a lot about your ability to get to experimentation faster as an organization.

[Rodney]

Sure.

[Sam Rothkopf]

And right. That's like was a really big central thesis is we've got to do more experimentation, which I think we still believe, but it's a bit more nuanced now where experimentation in and of itself isn't enough because there's a huge amount of fatigue that can come with that as well. You have to get to a point where you are not just experimenting on any of the information that you have in front of you, but being able to discern what are the important signals that you're seeing in the sky that need to go into your process and are worth that experimentation. Because experimentation can happen so much more quickly now with the advent of AI as well. That's the other thing. It adds fuel to any fire. So your ability. I've seen a lot of organizations actually overdo experimentation, experiment on anything, any idea they have. They're like making a go into lovable and making a site, going and creating a product immediately. And there's a huge amount of churn and burnout from experimentation for experimentation sake, not attached to a strategy of like what you think is going to be differentiating for you as an organization. So built to benefit from change is the kind of new central thesis that we're working with. And it is, I think, a process of like developing real discernment as a leadership team in an organization.

[Rodney]

I think there are a couple of shifts underneath this that you pointed out that I just want to sort of double down on. One is you and I talked a lot in your early days at the ready about what traditional types of strategic advantage were. And you know, there's lots of models of this, but it's like, basically like, what's your moat? Do you have a talent moat? Do you have a pricing moat? Do you have a product moat? Do you have a monopoly moat, like, whatever. And you were basically like, none of those are real anymore for a bunch of reasons like pace of change, AI et cetera, et cetera. Or if they're real, they're fleeting. And so that's like one shift is just the idea that the only way to win is to be better at change than anybody else. And two is which I love the point about the windmill. And I think it's a really wise metaphor because Steven, still in organizations, my experience is we're already full up and any change is incremental on top of what we already have to do that is not built to benefit from change. That is built to be fucking exhausted by change or to grind it out in order to make the change or to survive change. But it's not really built to benefit from change. So when I say that like, what do you see as being some of the key ingredients or even like mindsets of actually benefiting from change? Like what has to be true for an organization to benefit from change?

[Sam Rothkopf]

That's a great question. And I think, I think that there's a, like a practice of investigation and figuring out, you know, what it takes to get to a clear direction. This is another place where I think there can be some serious analysis paralysis.

[Rodney]

Totally.

[Sam Rothkopf]

It's like, let's just do one more study. Let's just make sure that we've like heard absolutely every voice across the organization in the category. And that is important. But I think like having a practice for what investigation really looks like and then how to actually get into move and decide faster so that you're not just navel gazing and doing investigation for investigation's sake, but you have a way of testing the things you're learning out quickly to see how they will work in your environment, with your customers, with your employees is the really key part to that. It's how are you developing a system of experimentation that gets you to a new outcome and back to investigate again? I think moving more quickly through that process is something that there are certain parts of the organization that are built on more principles of human centered design, where it happens a little bit more fluidly and naturally. But particularly in executive leadership teams or enablement teams. It's not native to their practice, I would say. And are the places where I actually think it's the most important right now in like, how is AI actually changing how work is designed in the future of our organization? Like, that's not a one stop shop. Let's have an implementation strategy for this. It's going to require repeated investigation. Deciding a movement together.

[Rodney]

Yeah, two things related to this. One is I think I've told this story on this podcast before, but again, I don't remember anything that I say here. It's all like being in the movie Memento. But I have a client who says this thing, every business has a spark. And what she means by that is when your business is inevitably declining or decaying because all businesses do, because the world changes or commodification or all the other reasons behind transformation. She's like the job of the CEO and the leadership team is to find the spark and the way that you find the spark is by sensing the environment. It's by talking to customers and being in the market and reading a shitload and doing a lot of this sense making and to tie your point and hers together, she's like, and then when you find the spark, you have to rapidly experiment around it, validate that it is the spark, and then put gas on it so it becomes like the rocket ship that changes the trajectory of the business. And. And I've watched her do this and so I know that this is a real thing. And it's also a thing that like, I've learned a lot about in my own stewardship of the ready from watching her do this. I compare that with other CEOs that I'm around who are really like hand wringing right now about AI and they're trying to like get to the correct answer. And they think that through like more research and more expertise and more PowerPoint decks from consultants, there's a right plan for them. And it might start sound like a small difference, but energetically, the difference between a CEO trying to make a plan for the future that is like correct and coherent and a CEO trying to find a quiet signal that they feel is the spark that then they can fan into a fire is very different.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Actually.

[Rodney]

It's very different in terms of what the conversations are and the way people think and talk and explore and whatever. And when you're like looking for the spark versus looking for the plan or fiddling with the plan, it just feels different. It just feels different. And I think, you know, the spark person has been very successful changing the trajectories of companies. And I think it's because of this foundational belief that it's always out there and you just have to find it. That is part of what is required in this moment.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah. And that is where I think that the idea of discernment comes from. Right. Like your ability to not just see opportunities, but see them and understand how they could apply to your business and be truly differentiating for you.

[Rodney]

Yes.

[Sam Rothkopf]

That's what people are missing right now. Everyone sees the opportunities, right? They're like, oh, faster work, you know, less employees. They're not like, how is this actually applicable to my customers in my business and specifically what we do for people?

[Rodney]

Right.

[Sam Rothkopf]

It's not being used as a differentiator, it's being used as a fast follow move, which I think is just, it's a bummer because it's like a real opportunity for people to create infrastructural change. That will pay dividends potentially for them in the future. But instead they're like looking over their shoulders at what their, like, friends at other organizations are doing and trying to copy.

[Rodney]

Totally, yeah.

[Sam Rothkopf]

It's a real missed opportunity.

[Rodney]

Did you see the, like, Ikea, the recent IKEA transformation story? No, that was AI related. This is so fucking smart. So exactly to your point about like, people are thinking about this wrong. So IKEA created some AI enabled customer service thing like everybody is doing. And they have a huge, huge call center. You know, IKEA has always been very like customer service oriented. So like they had like, I don't know, eight or nine thousand call center employees that were going to be displaced by this bot that could basically just do their jobs. And most everybody that we know would just have like laid those people off, taken the bump in like the P and L that quarter, paid four people a gigantic bonus and been like pop bottles. Ikea, like the fucking geniuses that they are, retrained those people, because those people's whole careers have been about talking to customers about product. So they know a phenomenal amount about Ikea's products. So they retrained them to be remote interior design consultants, which is a service that IKEA customers have been asking for for like two decades. They shifted that into basically like a new product for them or a new service for them. And it generated $1.4 billion, I believe, in the first year. And it's just like these are the kinds of like, investigate, decide, move examples where I'm like, that's what built to benefit from change means. Rather than either being like, we love our customer service people and we're like a family here, so we're not going to lay them off. Even though that's insane or AI has got it by. They're like, what could we do with this wealth of value that resides in this population of employees? Here's a fucking idea. Let's make a billion and a half dollars. I'm just like, more of that, please. I want to see more of that.

[Sam Rothkopf]

That is such a perfect example, you

[Rodney]

know, and not enough of that.

[Sam Rothkopf]

And it's like the idea that AI is an efficiency play and a cost cutting play is just so short sighted, so short sighted. And it's going to totally bite everyone in the ass here after these IPOs. It's just like fascinating to see it come to fruition. And our clients, we have clients in both camps. All of the people in the organizations we work with are always amazing people because the folks who are attracted to work design are just fascinating systems thinkers who care about you better. And that doesn't mean all the organizations are perfect. Right?

[Rodney]

Of course.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Disclaimer. But we've got definitely groups of folks where it's like, it's all about how are we going to use this to save money? And then people who are being much more strategic about it. And when the price of AI overall inflates and goes to even a fraction of what it's actually costing these companies to deliver it to us, the companies who have been using it strategically already and therefore understand the value that it's creating.

[Rodney]

Right.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Are going to be in a much better position than those who have just tried to like, create a game out of which employee can use it the

[Rodney]

most, bump the stock price. That game.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Just.

[Rodney]

Yeah. Use the word AI in your earnings call so that you get a lift that day. It's fun. Yeah, I think that's right. The one other, like, very brief story and then I want to shift to, to talk about something else, but I was in a session recently with a really, really good executive team. Some of them listen to this podcast and we were doing a sky session and they're in a hard business in a hard moment, like in a hard ecosystem. And it's the kind of business where there are a lot of different stakeholders that have very competing agendas and funding sources are murky. It's just a tough hang. And through a conversation with a leadership team about the external environment, there was probably like, I mean, it was spacious because it was at an off site, but it probably wasn't more than 90 minutes total. They sort of like saw something that I think might become their remote interior design business, that having spent a lot of time on market analysis in the last year, a lot of time doing customer interviews, having hired consultants to do like, you know, assessments and give them quadrants, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think this exact thing had come up. And I say that because to go back to the beginning of our conversation at this moment, when a lot of executives are like, just give me the answer, both AI and what is obvious is probably not going to be the answer. That is actually the competitive advantage you have to be in this kind of investigation in order to find the spark that's really the spark that really is exciting. That's really not just like, well, this is an opportunity. Everything's an opportunity. Like, and so it's just, I say this because as like, a lot of people who listen to this podcast always want, like, very practical, practical things they can try and, like, what this group literally tried was I was just like, let's talk about what's happening in the environment. I broke them into pairs, I gave them like 30 minutes, and then I had them, like, cluster these big trends. And there was a trend that they hit on that's not really part of the strategy right now. And they were really like, we can do some testing around this pretty quickly. And my sense is that, like, this is their design business. And I think it was, like, probably like it was for Ikea, I'm guessing, in that leadership team, it's not a thing that nobody knew about. It's not like it just emerged for the first time in that room, but, like, there was some kind of coalescing in that room because the conversation was meant to be exploratory and investigative by design that something different happened. And, like, to be built to benefit from change, you gotta do that shit. You can't just be like, what's the strategy? Execute the strategy. Did we execute the strategy? This sort of sensing muscle has to be stronger than ever.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Absolutely. The last thing I'll add to that is I think that the deciding and moving muscle, I think, also needs to be much more creative and expansive than we used to think. Because, like, a core insight that you come up with, and it was, you know, I spent before my time at the ready, I spent 12 years in strategy consulting, mostly in customer experience, design and understanding. All of that is about getting to a new insight, which is a hard thing to do because it's. Yep, everything has been discovered. Right. But getting to a new insight is one thing, but actually figuring out how that can be applied in different parts of your organization is another. So, you know, like, Zara didn't say, gosh, we wish that we could have different clothes at store level week by week and think, okay, now I have to change everything about how, like, all the clothes are made and what the supply chain looks like. They looked at all of the different parts of their organization where they could implement that concept that they want to be able to change what's in the store week to week and picked a very specific part of the organization to innovate around where it made the most sense. So it's also a creativity and experimentation in how you are executing on the spark, the insight or the core premise that you think could be the differentiator. That's also something that AI enables a lot more quicker discovery around, but is important and exciting because it's like, there's a lot of different ways to implement what makes you unique as an organization outside of exactly what ends up at the shelf or the bot that you're creating for customer service.

[Rodney]

I sort of have like an image in my mind which is not unrelated to depth finding, but it's like I think traditionally we liked to do things by depth in a very monolithic way. So it was like in the sky we were like, we want a, a holistic market analysis and we want to understand TAM and we want to understand the ecosystem and the competitors and like we'll pay a million dollars to have it off you pop. And then in the Sunshine Zone, it's like we want a comprehensive long term strategy with planning and milestones, et cetera. And then in the Twilight zone, to your exact point about execution, it's like, okay, now how do we implement all of this across the organization perfectly? And we don't need to talk about the midnight zone because we can imagine. But I think the move across all of those zones right now in complexity is like atomization. It's like do a little bit of the sensing, do a little bit of the choosing, do a little bit of the trying, don't try to do all of everything because like the market will move before you've had any impact. Like things will just change before there's any upshot. And so it's like what is just enough of each of those. And again with like the flywheel of complexity accelerating the way that it is, there is just not time and resource to have comprehensive anything. And it's like that will just kill you. It'll just kill you.

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah.

[Rodney]

So from here, what I want to talk about, and we've like, we've hinted at a lot of it, but I want to just put a pretty fine point on like what would you say in the from to of your time with us, first as an advisor and then as a steward, what would you say we as a collective, often with your prompting, have changed our minds about like, what are the big sort of from twos that you notice?

[Sam Rothkopf]

That's a great question. I think a big one that we've been talking about is that, you know, experimentation isn't enough. That discernment is kind of the new bottleneck that we're dealing with here. It's like, what are we experimenting around and then how quickly can we do it? There's also the things that haven't changed, like adaptiveness and experimentation, distributed leadership, orgs as complete systems. Like that stuff is still really important and central in how we believe work, design needs to happen and that it really Is as an organizational leadership team, your ability to investigate, decide and move together and actually change your mind is equally as important as finding the right answer. Yeah, it's so much more. Execution is strategy.

[Rodney]

Yeah.

[Sam Rothkopf]

There aren't.

[Rodney]

You say that and I'm always like, yes. What does that mean exactly? I think I just always agree with you when you say it. I'm like, yeah, that's smart. But I don't actually know.

[Sam Rothkopf]

It's just because I'm really assertive and confident in the way I deliver things

[Rodney]

with a lot of conviction and I'm like, that seems right.

[Sam Rothkopf]

That's 90% of the battle folks. And the other 10% is hair.

[Rodney]

The other 10% has gray hair.

[Sam Rothkopf]

I didn't know you were going to ask follow up questions. I'd actually have to add an answer to my, my pithy statement since you've asked. I just think that even for us, I think strategy and execution have kind of been seen as two separate things. Like you develop the strategy and then you figure out how you're going to execute on the strategy. And we have like what I was most attracted to with the ready at first was actually just the system of, of creating resilience strategy that you all have developed where you use strategy as a system, not as, you know, a deck. And I think we've moved beyond that to saying building an ability to actually execute at pace is in itself a strategy. In this liminal space we aren't going to be able to set a three year strategy. We need to be setting a three month strategy, figuring out and discerning the right information to actually execute on. So I think execution, I would make it like a central pillar of almost any strategy at the moment is like our ability to actually test and learn and execute on the things that are going to matter most for our organization. Does that crock for you?

[Rodney]

It does. And to me execution is really just like how the system works. You know, it's all of the things that we've believed about work design and changing your operating system so that you get different results. I think that the idea that that is strategic does feel new in some ways because I think our work has often been seen as like, oh, that's like operational stuff or that's just like the tactical stuff. And it's like that's the stuff, that's the stuff that will keep you alive. And I think for like our trad homies listening, what this doesn't look like is an additional bullet point in the strategy deck. That's about like teamwork because I see a lot of that stuff, like, I see a lot of like excellence in execution or like horizontal collaboration or whatever as like a separated bullet point. And to me it's the same thing as trying to separate AI as a different thing or separate DEI as a different thing. It's like if you don't use smooth, fast execution as a design principle under what you're building, you're fucked. And it's no different than saying like, you know, you cannot hire an AI czar or a head of DEI and put them in an office and go change everything about this place. Incidentally, you don't have the keys to anything. Like you can't change comp or structure or roles or fucking anything else. But we want this place to be inclusive or AI LED or insert any other phase shift here. It's like if you want to be an execution machine, and machine is the wrong term to use because we believe in living systems, but you get has to be actually part of how you steer and doing strategy work should feel like fast, smooth execution and so should what comes out of it. Like, I think it's just we can't disaggregate these things the way that we used to say, here's the plan, now somebody go do it.

[Sam Rothkopf]

That's totally right. And I think the new thesis and my like guidance I guess to businesses at the moment is that we need to be treating volatility as a resource rather than a threat. It needs to be seen as the thing that's powering the organization, not the thing that is in the way it's

[Rodney]

so hard to do.

[Sam Rothkopf]

That's the mindset shift though. And it is so hard to do. The larger the organization, the more lines of business, the more legacy systems and org debt that exists, the harder these things are. And any company right now should be having a TRANSFO A and TRANSFO B conversation. Like, how are we preparing our current organization so that it can be ready for large scale change in the future? How do we make it the best it can be? And then what? Like truly, what does that business be look like? And how are those things connected by capability, which you've already talked about many times the podcast, but if you're not doing that right now, you're missing a beat.

[Rodney]

Yeah, I think that's right. The last thing I want to talk about, Sam, before we wrap up our very first step together, is sort of what you just said, which is like this mindset shift. For executives to see volatility as an advantage, a strategic advantage, and as like gas in the tank rather than a threat. And literally as you said those words, I like felt a reaction in my body of just like boo, lies. I hate it because it's like, yes. And like many of us are dealing with boards or investors or the street or whatever the fuck. So like how do you personally, like, don't even worry, don't. You can take your consulting hat off for the moment. Like how do you be in that? Because I do see you be in that. Like how, how do you find that you are able to, to feel like all of this change is beneficial to us?

[Sam Rothkopf]

Yeah.

[Rodney]

How are you as a person built to benefit from change, Sam? That's the real question I'm asking.

[Sam Rothkopf]

I mean other than I've like installed action meetings in my like Sunday night family Hong Kong chats. But no, I think it is fair saying that you need treat volatility as your fuel, not your fire. It's definitely easier said than done. It's like, what does that actually mean in practice? For me personally, a big part of it is a mindset shift and a posture of openness to new information and changing your mind and thinking that again, I guess harkening back to your original thought on we have to be ready to accept the fact that we are going to change our minds and that changing your mind is actually a good thing to do at this point. There's definitely, I mean there's a certain amount of when you find the spark of the organization, which is what I've been focusing on for us and have for a long time. You know, I was that had a brand at 23andMe before this and then leading a strategy consulting firm for Omnicom for the years before that. And I think an openness to listen and adapt and be willing to accept new truths and imagine a possibility where that could be beneficial and not a detriment to the plans that you've put in place. A lot of that is just how you approach the world. So there's just a mindset shift as leaders that I think will pay dividends. And I also think having trust in people, maybe that sounds a little hokey, but you know, there's only so much that you as an individual person can actually do and achieve and like your ability to let go of authority and actually let people do their jobs and empower them to make decisions and make mistakes and build the capability to actually think about. Okay, if my job is going to get like take the IKEA example, my job is going to get co opted by AI. What does that actually mean for what I get to do in the future as opposed to, oh, this means that my job is gonna be replaced. Like that mindset of being able to feel creative in these moments that feel like survive, but moving into a thrive mentality, I think that might be the most important skill to have as an individual. Not even just as a leader, but as a human being in this liminal chapter we're all in.

[Rodney]

I love that. And I do feel like so much of what I read about is like, you know, the future of humanity is like creativity and great taste and a lot of the things you and I are talking about and what they fail to recognize is like that the psychology of fear and survival makes creativity and discernment very difficult. Which doesn't mean that it's not the right answer. It just means that like our job as leaders is to do the work on ourselves and the work of non attachment required to be creative and to be like, liberated from our own egos and from our own plans and from our own correctness. But that's some really hard work. And it's just frankly work that like most leaders I encounter, are unwilling to do. And I, I fundamentally believe that the leaders who will be able to practice the kind of creativity that you're talking about and the kind of like exploration and the kind of investigation and the kind of sense making and the messiness that's required in this moment are the people who have like a pretty clear, strong sense of who they are so that they don't get like lost in the sus. Like so that they can be like, grounded and stable and feel whole and capable even as they really like swim in the uncertainty of the moment. And that's a pretty tall order. And again, talk about what we weren't taught to do. It was not that. So yeah, I think this moment is shedding a real spotlight on that. And also just, you know, what has been rewarded for the last 50 years that has gotten us to this point and to your point, how different what this moment calls for really is did we do it?

[Sam Rothkopf]

I think we did it.

[Rodney]

This show is edited and mixed by Taylor Marvin at Coop Studios 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 they work. Thank you for listening.