Work as a Product with Dart Lindsley

“When they say let’s take the emotion out of the decision, that’s even an emotional decision.” Louis Roden is the founder of Inspire Consulting Group, an international leadership development consultancy, and has spent more than two decades in organizational development and service culture across hospitality, logistics, and finance. His book Everything Is Personal: Embracing Stewardship in the Workplace and Everyplace argues that leaders who hide behind “it’s just business” erode the trust their people need. We cover the phrase “it’s business, not personal,” stewardship, why work feels neutral for so many people, how leaders build trust day to day, and why the golden rule gets it wrong. What we covered: The COVID lockdown and the nudge from his wife that got the book finished Mark Twain’s “Be good and you will be lonesome” and Following the Equator as the first travel blog Why nobody says they loved a job because they were well managed Work as a gray, neutral 80 percent of waking life Why Louis can’t stand the phrase work-life balance Stewardship of the people who hand a leader a big piece of their lives Layoffs, hard feedback, and the trite cover of “it’s not personal” Why no one can take the emotion out of a decision Frederick Taylor, scientific management, and work as a negative good Rational and irrational anger, and empathy for joy as well as sadness Trust built in small moments and eroded by paper cuts The bartender whose smile disappears when the bar gets busy Thirty authentic seconds over a scheduled one-hour one-on-one The weekly check-in as a box to tick Flipping the golden rule: treat people the way they want to be treated The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya’s sword, and anyone selling a magic bullet People: Mark Twain, author Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author Simon Sinek, author Frederick Taylor, father of scientific management Dart Lindsley, previous guest on this show René Descartes, philosopher Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist Ernest Hemingway, author John Steinbeck, author Books: Everything Is Personal, Louis Roden Following the Equator, Mark Twain Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck Organizations: Inspire Consulting Group, Gallup, Starbucks Find Louis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisroden/ Website: https://inspirelsc.com Book: https://everythingispersonal.org Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

“In a novel context, a context like science or R&D or innovation or entrepreneurship, mediocrity would be no failures.” Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Her research made psychological safety a core idea in modern management, and she is the author of Teaming, The Fearless Organization and Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023. We cover the failed hypothesis that launched her career, why bad is stronger than good, the three types of failure, Toyota’s Andon cord, near misses, whether failure is a privilege, and what leaders can do to build psychological safety. What we covered: The 1990s hospital study where the better teams seemed to make more medication errors The realization that those teams were reporting more of their errors Awfulizing, then a looking-out-the-window moment in a 15th-floor PhD office Interpersonal risk and why psychological safety matters most in knowledge work Why we notice negatives faster than positives Going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm Basic, complex and intelligent failures, and the five criteria for an intelligent one Astro Teller at X: if you’re not failing, you’re not taking the right risks Rewarding teams for shutting down failing projects The fundamental attribution error, at work and at home James Reason’s Swiss cheese model in aviation and healthcare Toyota’s Andon cord, from loom machines to a San Francisco trolley car, and why most pulls never stop the line Near misses as good catches, and the case for a near miss day Why failure is a privilege, and how leaders can level the failure playing field Whether encouraging failure means celebrating mediocrity Three moves to build psychological safety: frame the work, ask questions, respond productively People: Arie Kruglanski, psychologist and previous guest on this show Roy Baumeister, social psychologist Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School professor Astro Teller, head of X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory James Reason, British error psychologist Books: Right Kind of Wrong, Amy Edmondson The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmondson Teaming, Amy Edmondson The Progress Principle, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer The Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Articles: Bad Is Stronger Than Good, Roy Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer and Kathleen Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001 https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323 Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Econometrica, 1979 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1914185 Organizations: Harvard Business School, X, Google, Toyota, Microsoft Find Amy: Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6451 Website: https://amycedmondson.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

"You kind of sell your soul, it's like blood money a little bit." Jessie Schofer is the founder of Stakkd, a database that helps HR teams find their way through a crowded technology market. She came to HR from projects and transformation work, led people strategy and change inside hyperscaling unicorns, and this year moderated two debates I took part in, and lost. We cover what she saw from the moderator's chair, why people arrive at a new job engaged and lose it within months, why HR keeps falling short, and why she has been saying HR is dead for years. What we covered: Why we still need managers in a world of AI, from the debate moderator The scale-ups where every team wrote its own operating manual Poor relationships at work as the root of Jessie's most disengaged years Beautiful mission statements at companies that are still hard to work for Ricardo Semler's diseconomies of human scale, and Dunbar's number Zapier welcoming candidates who pull out of its hiring process New hires who were sold a story and ask, "What did I sign up to?" Calibration meetings and the five-out-of-five rating AI performance ratings as scientific management 2.0 Tiny teams, the pizza rule, and splitting teams before they grow too big Why individual pay for performance discourages admitting mistakes The director of comp Jessie told not to join Why HR is burnt out, and the growth playbooks she wants to throw out Renaming HR as organizational success Maslow, duty of care, and whether we will look back on disengagement as unfair Stakkd, its HR tech database, and Stakkd 2.0 People: Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN and previous guest on this show Ricardo Semler, former CEO of Semco Robin Dunbar, evolutionary psychologist W. Edwards Deming, management scholar Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor Abraham Maslow, psychologist Books: Close the Gap, James Alexander Seechurn Articles: The HR Infrastructure Gap No One Is Talking About, FNDN Series with Matt McFarlane, 2026 https://fndnseries.fndn.com.au/podcast/s/fndn_series/the_hr_infrastructure_gap_no_one_is_talking_about_with_jessie_schofer_founder_at_stakkd Organizations: Stakkd, Semco, Zapier, General Electric, Haier, Mondragon, Handelsbanken, FNDN Find Jessie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessieschofer/ Stakkd: https://stakkd.tech Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

Is it possible to run a professional services company without individual goals, without billable hours, without performance ratings? Gerry Murphy and Nua Group certainly think so... Gerry Murphy is a co-founder and partner at Nua Group, the San Francisco firm that describes itself as the anti-consulting firm. He qualified as an actuary in Dublin, spent eight years in Europe, and was a senior partner at Mercer with earlier leadership roles at Watson Wyatt before he, Joe and Chris set Nua up ten years ago. We cover the anti-consulting model, what happens to accountability when you delete the machinery, managers who never wanted the job, job architecture as a system of control, and whether any of it survives at ten thousand people. What we covered: Anti-consulting as a playful poke at billable hours, sales goals and internal meetings Clients love their consultants, not the firms those consultants work for Two internal meetings every two weeks, and what the rest of the week is for Nua consultants asking the partners whether they could please track their hours The nickel and diming that comes with the hourly model Everyone at Nua gets the same bonus, whatever their individual performance The bonus that moves from 20 percent to 21 and pleases nobody Four job levels on paper, two in practice: partner and consultant Majors and minors in place of practice areas Gerry's rules of management, starting with do nothing, ending with two blank rules Managers who never wanted the job and took it for the pay Mercer's manager charter, and Jensen Huang's thirty direct reports Electing your own manager, and where Gerry pushes back on the idea The client whose job architecture, bonuses and equity created an incredible amount of work Whether AI makes experience and education requirements irrelevant Stock options, RSUs, dilution and growth The Ryland Report, and why the team asked for more financial detail, not less Scaling to ten thousand people, and the naming of Uber Nua People: Joe Farris, co-founder of Nua Group Paul Reiman, compensation consultant and previous guest on this show Dan Walter, equity compensation specialist and the first guest on this show Jack Stack, who led one of the most leveraged employee buyouts in US history Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Books: Close the Gap, James Alexander Seechurn Articles: Are CEOs Paid for Performance? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Equity Incentives, Ric Marshall and Linda-Eling Lee, MSCI ESG Research, 2016 https://www.msci.com/research-and-insights/blog-post/are-ceos-paid-for-performance Organizations: Nua Group, Mercer, Watson Wyatt, Radford, Irish Pensions Trust, Morning Star, Nucor, Handelsbanken, Buurtzorg, Nvidia, Gallup, MSCI, Stripe Find Gerry: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerrymurphynuagroup/ Website: https://www.nuahr.com Email: [email protected] Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

"Best practice is either a product that somebody wants to sell and as a result it's common, but not necessarily proven as best." Paul Reiman is the founder and managing partner of Novo Insights, a Chicago-based compensation consulting firm, with nearly 30 years in compensation as a consultant and in-house leader. His book Pay Differently, out October 5, argues that pay transparency exposes the shortcuts compensation teams have relied on for decades. We cover the myth of best practice, the loyalty tax, job architecture as the office refrigerator, why the offer letter draws less scrutiny than the merit cycle, and whether sales commissions survive consumption-based selling.