Podcast Summary: At Work with The Ready

Episode: AUA: Your Team Isn't Ready For Your Future
Date: November 24, 2025
Hosts: Rodney Evans & Sam Spurlin

Overview of the Episode

In this Ask Us Anything (AUA) mini-episode, hosts Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin tackle a heady challenge submitted by a listener:
"How do I bring people with me when I'm already operating a few years ahead—without softening what I see or being perceived as a threat?"

The conversation centers on the struggles of being ahead of your peers or team in terms of vision and strategy, and how to responsibly bridge that gap without alienating others or getting frustrated.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Resist “Thought Leadership”; Show, Don’t Tell

• Sam warns against adopting an overt “thought leader” persona, especially inside your own organization. He suggests focusing less on “telling” people about the future and more on “showing” them through tangible experiments and actions.
• Quote (00:33):

  "Resist the urge to thought lead. …I would encourage you to shift from telling to showing. If you are living in the future, what are some ways that you can show people that and help them experience that little taste of the future as well, without even necessarily being super explicit about it?"
  — Sam Spurlin

2. Translate Future Visions into Present Actions

• Rodney agrees, highlighting the importance of holding your long-term hypotheses and translating them into immediate, actionable ideas for your context.
• It’s crucial to use your foresight to inform what’s relevant now, rather than persuading everyone to jump to your timeline.
• Quote (01:59):

  “Your responsibility then is to translate that to what it means now, not try to convince people to share your vision of what a few years from now looks like. ...My job right now isn't to convince everybody that I work with that that's what's going to happen… My job right now is to hold a hypothesis about the future, test a component of it or the very early, early signals of it in the present, and keep those things in a feedback loop...”
  — Rodney Evans

3. Meet People Where They Are; Recognize Their Journey

• Sam emphasizes that others can’t simply leap to your position—they need to experience steps for themselves.
• A leader ahead of their team should aid others’ journey by reducing the cycle time for learning and experimentation, letting them take “the next step,” even if it seems basic to you.
• Quote (04:07):

  "How did one get into the future? You know, you took steps and you ended up now where you are... It can be frustrating to kind of look back and say...now in one big step, you all join me here. But that's not how people experience it. They have to go on their own journey into the future."
  — Sam Spurlin

4. Seek Out Your Own Future-Focused Community

• Rodney advises connecting with peers (possibly outside your org) who can speak to the same time horizon, so you aren’t left feeling alone or frustrated.
• Don’t burden your colleagues with your futuristic ideas if they aren’t ready or interested; instead, nurture that part of yourself through other channels.
• Quote (04:56):

  "Find your people to talk to about that...the way not to do that is to make my clients have that conversation with me because they don't want to. … I also just think carving out a space for yourself so that whatever futurist domain is particularly compelling to you, you have a network or just three or four like-minded people that you can sort of go like, 'this is what I'm seeing. Is this what you're seeing'..."
  — Rodney Evans

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On resisting the urge to go full “thought leader”:

  “…it is really easy to kind of wear out your welcome if you kind of adopt this thought leadership persona, especially internal organization.”
  — Sam Spurlin (00:38)

• On patience and a feedback loop:

  “All of us who live in the future would love to be able to just like snap our fingers and have whole organizations be like, she's right, I see it now. …But that's not how human beings are and how they work.”
  — Rodney Evans (02:45)

• On not trying to hurry others:

  “Even though it's not going to feel like the future to you, but it is to them...then that's how you accelerate people to bring them into what you're seeing.”
  — Sam Spurlin (04:36)

• On self-care for forward thinkers:

  “Just because it's not easy to integrate into your present context doesn't mean you shouldn't feed it. You just might have to feed it somewhere else.”
  — Rodney Evans (05:46)

Important Timestamps

• 00:33 — Sam on shifting from telling to showing
• 01:59 — Rodney on translating future vision into now
• 04:07 — Sam on the journey to the future and helping others accelerate their path
• 04:56 — Rodney on finding your ‘future’ people outside your immediate context

Tone & Approach

The hosts maintain a candid, empathic tone—balancing practical advice with an understanding of the frustrations felt by “future-oriented” team members. Both hosts emphasize humility, patience, and the value of indirect influence over hard persuasion.

Summary Takeaways

• Don’t try to “convince” people to see what you see about the future; experiment in the present and let others experience it.
• Translate your big ideas into actionable, relevant steps for your current organizational context.
• Recognize that others need to travel their own road toward the future—help them by clarifying and shortening their next steps.
• Find or build your own community of forward-thinking peers to keep yourself inspired and sane.
• Keep your futuristic edge alive, but don’t burden others—or yourself—by expecting universal buy-in before people are ready.