50. The Ways of Working Movement Failed. Now What?

**Sam Spurlin** (0:00)
It can be helpful to remember that a lot of the ideas that we're talking about, it's not like we didn't come up with them in the 20 teens. Like, from the 50s and the 60s, like Mary Parker, Follett, like these ideas have been in the ether for a long time, and there's been lots of cycles, and there will continue to be lots of cycles into the future.

**Rodney Evans** (0:22)
Hey everybody, this is At Work with The Ready, a podcast about work design and how organizations can make change work in their favor. I'm Rodney Evans, and I'm here with my co-host, Sam Spurlin.

**Sam Spurlin** (0:33)
Companies are facing more change than they were built for. The problem is organizations are still running on management ideas from a completely different era. Rodney and I work with leaders and teams who are redesigning how work actually gets done, so change becomes fuel in the tank instead of sand in the gears.

**Rodney Evans** (0:51)
On this show, we share patterns that we're seeing inside of organizations, what's working, what's getting in their way.
Today, we're taking a slight detour from the usual and we're talking about the failure in many ways of the ways of working movement and what we are seeing around that and digging into why that has happened. But first, we will check in because how you do something matters just as much as what you do.

**Sam Spurlin** (1:16)
Well, this new way of working we are sticking with, which is the check-in question.

**Rodney Evans** (1:21)
I'm still long on the check-in round.

**Sam Spurlin** (1:23)
Yeah, me too. Me too.
What was your first music purchase with your own money?

**Rodney Evans** (1:30)
So Sam, I am an only child. And if there is one skill that I developed early in my life, it was hustling my parents for things that I wanted. I was spoiled as shit.
So I was being rewarded for something I had done, probably grade or cello related. I was like six or seven. I was given the money to buy a tape because I am that many years old.

**Sam Spurlin** (1:56)
Just real quick, a peek behind the curtain. My first draft of this checking question said, what was the first CD you ever bought? And then I was like, wait a second, wait a second.

**Rodney Evans** (2:04)
You're like, she's too old for that.

**Sam Spurlin** (2:05)
That might not work.

**Rodney Evans** (2:06)
Yeah, that's fair. You were right.
My mom took me to Bradley's, which was like the target of my day.

**Sam Spurlin** (2:13)
Okay.

**Rodney Evans** (2:14)
RIP Bradley's.
And I only had enough money for one tape and I couldn't decide between Michael Jackson's Bad and Madonna's, I'm going to say it was, what was Madonna's first record? Was it called Material Girl?

**Sam Spurlin** (2:31)
You're asking the wrong guy.

**Rodney Evans** (2:34)
Okay. Someone out there is screaming the answer into the air right now.

**Sam Spurlin** (2:37)
Jack might be the one screaming into the air right now.

**Rodney Evans** (2:41)
Ah, fair. Anyway, with my newly formed skills of manipulation, I convinced my mom to give me enough money for both of the tapes, because I pretended that I couldn't decide and therefore was so paralyzed that I could have neither. And she finally gave in. And so I got two tapes with my own quote unquote money right out of my mom's wallet at the Bradlees. And that is what about. And man, bangers both.

**Sam Spurlin** (3:06)
Yeah. All right.

**Rodney Evans** (3:07)
Nice. I'm looking up her first album because we need to know.

**Sam Spurlin** (3:10)
Yeah, of course. We can't have that lingering just unknown in the world.

**Rodney Evans** (3:15)
It was just called Madonna. Okay.

**Sam Spurlin** (3:17)
Oh, all right.

**Rodney Evans** (3:18)
Yeah, that's right. Anyway, that was it. What about you?

**Sam Spurlin** (3:22)
For me, I'm pretty sure it was 1997, which would have made me 10
And the memory that I have is it must have been like birthday money or something because I had enough money to buy my first CD player, like personal CD player, and I got three CDs to go along with it. This CD player was bright yellow and it was a piece of shit.

**Rodney Evans** (3:42)
Was it Sony?

**Sam Spurlin** (3:43)
If you looked at it the wrong way, yes, it was.

**Rodney Evans** (3:45)
Yeah, obviously.

**Sam Spurlin** (3:46)
And the three CDs that I got, one was just some like generic instrumental piano CD that I wanted to like be able to listen to when I was doing homework or something because that's who I am. And then the other two, one was Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill.