Disengaged

How to Build HR That Works with Jessie Schofer

"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.

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Anti-Consulting with Gerry Murphy

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: gerry.murphy@nuahr.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

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Pay Differently with Paul Reiman

"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. What we covered: Best practice as common practice with a better publicist The telecom sales leader who asked a 22-year-old Paul, "Best practice according to whom?" The unproven rule of three measures in a sales plan, none under 20 percent Why candidates who refuse to apply without a range move employers faster than legislation The $100 toaster on sale for $50 the next day The fintech firm that turned down a star analyst asking for a $1 million salary The 75th percentile, and why a percentile is not a philosophy Job architecture as the office refrigerator and its 180 ketchup packets The manager who automates three roles and loses every direct report The loyalty tax, and why stayers earn less than leavers Merit budget benchmarking, and why to budget 9 percent next year Same-store pay growth, borrowed from Starbucks Lori the recruiter, her Coffee is for Closers mug, and fixing the front door Self-set pay at Semco and Smarkets, and crunchy or creamy peanut butter The printing company that replaced commissions with salary and profit share The hand-drawn overhead transparency behind the 50/50 pay mix slide People: Alfie Kohn, author and previous guest on this show Dan Ariely, behavioral economist and previous guest on this show Andrea LaRowe, 37signals, previous guest on this show Stefan Gaertner, Syndio, previous guest on this show Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, researchers Boris Groysberg, Harvard Business School professor Louis Kelso, economist Philip Slater, sociologist Jerry Colletti, sales compensation consultant Bryan Briscoe, Paul's longtime co-presenter Books: Pay Differently, Paul Reiman Chasing Stars, Boris Groysberg The Progress Principle, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer Articles: Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Econometrica, 1979 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1914185 Organizations: Novo Insights, 37signals, Semco, Smarkets, Haier, Morning Star, Nucor, Handelsbanken, Spotify, Salesforce, Starbucks Find Paul: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulreiman/ Website: https://www.novoinsights.com Book: https://paydifferently.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

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Predictably Irrational with Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. He co-founded Irrational Capital and has written eight books, including Predictably Irrational and Misbelief, which he wrote after a COVID conspiracy theory cast him as one of its villains. We cover the vintage Swiss Army knife model of decision-making, the India experiments behind Large Stakes and Big Mistakes, what Fortune 500 satisfaction surveys predict about stock returns, fairness as a judgment no regression will settle, and the writing Dan is doing now about the end of life. What we covered: States that introduced fines for texting and driving and watched accidents rise The brain as a vintage Swiss army knife, adequate at many tasks, built for a world we have left Car engineers who design against human error, social media engineers who design for it Prepaid debit against credit, weekly loads against monthly, Monday against Friday The India experiments, where a month of pay riding on a puzzle made people worse at solving it The brain surgeon offered $100,000 and threatened with a hitman in parking spot 33 Which survey questions predict alpha, and which predict nothing Perceived fairness outranking salary level, and the argument Dan could not win on Wall Street The company that spent a day celebrating failed projects and paid half a million dollars to the winner Bureaucracy as an engine whose definition of success is nothing happening The hospital janitor we want to stop doing their job, and what job descriptions cost us Theory X, Theory Y, and the ancient craftsmen who spent half their time on beauty Two years spent interviewing the people who wanted him tried, imprisoned, or hanged Writing as a way to make sense of his mother's death, and the three books he has in progress People: Alfie Kohn, author and previous guest on this show Simon Jones, narrator of Dan's audiobooks Ed Lazear, economist behind the Safelite windshield study Sam Glucksberg, psychologist of the candle problem experiments Douglas McGregor, originator of Theory X and Theory Y Books: Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely Misbelief, Dan Ariely The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Articles: Large Stakes and Big Mistakes, Dan Ariely, Uri Gneezy, George Loewenstein and Nina Mazar, The Review of Economic Studies, 2009 https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/76/2/451/1594205 Organizations: Duke University, Center for Advanced Hindsight, Center for Advanced Bureaucracy, Irrational Capital, Harbor Capital, Alphabet's X, Safelite Find Dan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danariely/ Website: https://danariely.com Substack: https://danariely.substack.com Bureaucracy: https://bureaucracy.danariely.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

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How to Get Pay Right with Matt McFarlane

Matt McFarlane and I met earlier this year on opposite sides of a debate about pay for performance. His team argued in favor and won the audience vote 62 to 38, and a week later he published a piece saying he had never been a fan of it. That opening carries the rest of the conversation: what pay for performance sets out to do, why the mechanism breaks at nearly every link in the chain, and what companies use instead once they stop treating an annual rating as the engine of everything. Matt runs FNDN, a compensation consultancy for startups based in Australia. He built the pay structures at Oyster that carried the company from 200 to 600 people across 70 countries, and he now hosts the FNDN Series podcast and newsletter and runs the Startup People Summit, a one-day APAC event for people leaders inside high-growth companies. We cover the companies that have taken negotiation out of pay entirely, the grip that benchmark data holds over compensation decisions, the tension between fairness and individual pay in collaborative work, what happens to the manager's role as AI absorbs more of the coordination, and the practical side of leaving a salaried job to consult. What we covered Why Matt argued for pay for performance in a debate and against it a week later The three percent merit budget, and what the annual salary survey roundups tell us Rewarding a standout year with money, or using it to raise the standard across a team Why Matt left the job he enjoyed most in his career to build a compensation practice How his client window moved from 50 employees to 100 or 150, and what breaks at that size Benchmarking as a source of cognitive closure, and the living wage argument underneath it Runn's single rate per role, and the salary trajectory that made their people harder to poach Carta, 37signals, Buffer, and PayPal as models that remove the negotiation Fairness as a relative judgment, and how quickly a good salary becomes an unfair one Why US companies resist narrow bands, and what wide bands say about trust in hiring The bad hire label, the myth of the A player, and where responsibility for performance sits The player coach, the stretched leader, and ClickUp's million-dollar salary bands What Matt tells anyone thinking about leaving a salaried role to consult People Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN Rowan Savage, co-founder and CTO of Runn Andrea LaRowe of 37signals, a previous guest on this show Books Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin Articles "How to Become a HR Consultant," Matt McFarlane, FNDN Series #7 https://fndnseries.fndn.com.au/p/how-to-become-a-hr-consultant Organizations FNDN, Startup People Summit, Oyster, Runn, Carta, 37signals, Buffer, PayPal, Zappos, ClickUp, Buurtzorg, Gallup, Radford Find Matt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewmcfarlane/ FNDN: https://www.fndn.com.au/ FNDN Series podcast and newsletter: https://fndnseries.fndn.com.au/ Startup People Summit: https://startuppeoplesummit.com/ Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

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Protecting the Potential of the Idea with Dylan Soopramania

Dylan Soopramania is a creative director and consultant whose work spans the UK, Australia, and North America, with campaigns for Coca-Cola, EA Sports, KitKat, Hellmann's, and Google. He designed the covers for all three of my books and the branding for this podcast. We have known each other for thirty years, and this is the first episode recorded in person and the first under the Disengaged name. Advertising is the one industry where creativity is the product, which makes it the sharpest test of the argument in Close the Gap. Dylan's rule for creative leads is to protect the potential of the idea: push it to the point where you and your trusted partners feel uncomfortable, because ideas get killed in internal conversations long before anyone learns where they could have gone. The same problem sits inside every business that needs to innovate. If people do not feel safe suggesting things that might get shot down, they play it down the middle. Dylan's account of what happened when I stopped chasing him on the cover, that the more I backed off the more responsible he felt, is the whole book in one sentence. What we covered: What a creative director does, and why brands rent a creative's tone of voice How the Close the Gap cover came about Good briefs, bad briefs, and Hellmann's sneakers made from food waste Presenting irrational ideas to rational people Mad Men is dead: culture now informs marketing Protecting the potential of the idea Pixar's brain trust and the Overton window Culture fit as hiring people who look and sound like you Why the modern company still runs on a hierarchy inherited from the church and the factory The KitKat catapult Focus groups, market data, and the sea of sameness The manager as emulsifier Trust, control, purpose, and tension Why asking people to keep doing what they do well kills the spark Freelance versus full time Leaving Dylan alone: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in one example Proactive work, gold wall sessions, and 3M's fifteen percent time Executive pay, the C-suite, and the role of profit People: Steve Hey (Dylan's creative partner), Dart Lindsley (Work for Humans), Jessie Zwaan (job, career, calling), Amy Wrzesniewski, Aaron Dignan, Rensis Likert, Abraham Maslow, Joseph Overton, Paul Buchheit, Jack Welch, Steve Jobs Books: Close the Gap and What Pay Costs (James Seechurn), Purpose and Work (Jessie Zwaan), Brave New Work (Aaron Dignan), Colin Splodge and The Sizzledodge (Steve Hey and Dylan Soopramania) Organizations: Pixar, Coca-Cola, KitKat / J. Walter Thompson Sydney, Hellmann's / Ogilvy, Banana Boat, Google / The Hallway, 3M, General Electric, Patagonia, Buurtzorg, Nucor, Handelsbanken, Haier, AFL-CIO, MSCI Find Dylan on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dylan-soopramania-5a439223 and on Instagram at @dyl_soop. KitKat catapult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD3DUt4eZZw. Close the Gap: https://amzn.to/4x4FAZ6 Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH

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Uncertainty and Closure with Arie Kruglanski

Arie Kruglanski is one of the most cited social psychologists alive, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and a co-founder of START, the national center for the study of terrorism. He gave the field two ideas that shape this conversation: the need for cognitive closure, our drive to resolve ambiguity and settle on an answer, and significance quest theory, the claim that the need to matter sits beneath much of what we do. This episode takes both into the workplace. We start small, with a question that sent James to Arie's work in the first place: why do companies cling to performance ratings, job titles, and job architecture when the evidence against them is overwhelming? Closure is the answer, and Arie explains why noise, fatigue, and time pressure make people more certain rather than less, and why premature closure has been the mother of great mistakes, from Pearl Harbor to organizational change. From there we move to significance: the oldest complaint in history, the road that took Arie from architecture to psychology, and why pay has become the emblem of how much we matter. We close on the hardest problem of all, how anything changes, and a personal question about holding confidence and uncertainty at the same time. What we covered Cognitive closure, and why difficult conditions produce false confidence rather than better thinking Seizing and freezing, belief perseverance, and why information that was available still gets ignored The Italian postal workers, and why people resist the idea of change more than any specific change Careers as closure: why we follow available jobs over real passions, and Arie's own turn away from architecture The quest for significance, from terrorism research to the workplace where most people earn their worth Pay as significance, the CEO pay ratio, and the insatiability that comes with a bigness-oriented culture Bigness and Smallness, the reciprocal model of significance, and love as merit times appreciation Competitive individualism, Arachne and hubris, and whether significance requires winners and losers Weber, Calvinism, and the roots of the American work ethic Psychological safety, loss aversion, and why change must start small Religion as an ancient antidote to hubris, and what fills the vacuum when it recedes People: Arie Kruglanski (University of Maryland, START). Referenced: Dan Raviv and Sophia Moskalenko, his co-authors; Harold Kelley; Antonio Pierro; B. F. Skinner; Alfie Kohn (No Contest); Leon Festinger (When Prophecy Fails); Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (positive psychology); Carol Dweck; Angela Duckworth; Antonio Damasio; Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (loss aversion); Amy Edmondson (psychological safety); Max Weber. Books: Uncertain: How to Turn Your Biggest Fear into Your Greatest Power; The Quest for Significance: Harnessing the Need that Makes the World Go Round, with Dan Raviv; and the new Feeling Big, Feeling Small: The Human Yearning for Significance and Wonder, with Sophia Moskalenko. Find Arie: through his books, and on The Quest for Significance podcast, which he hosts with Dan Raviv.

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The Employee Advantage with Stephan Meier

In this episode of Disengaged, I'm joined by Stephan Meier — behavioral economist, Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School, and author of The Employee Advantage — to explore why the next great shift in business is from customer-centricity to employee-centricity. Stephan's argument is that business has made this journey before. Companies moved from a product-centric to a customer-centric model, building tools along the way — segmentation, journey mapping, personalisation — to understand and delight customers. Those same tools can now be repurposed for employees, and the companies that do it will create an advantage rivals cannot easily copy. As Stephan puts it, hard is good: a culture where people are engaged, motivated, and innovative takes years to build — and that is exactly what makes it difficult to compete with. What we covered: The evolution from shareholder value to customer centricity to employee centricity The zero-sum fallacy — Amazon's Harry Potter gamble and Costco's employee-first economics Where money works, where it stops moving the needle, and how a $5 favour destroys a friendship Purpose — Kennedy's single mission for NASA and the janitor who wasn't mopping floors The engaged coach — clear direction with real empowerment Eli Lilly applying customer journey mapping to female talent progression H-E-B's cult following and the four-star truck driver Haier's RenDanHeYi model of autonomous micro-enterprises Buurtzorg's self-managing nurse teams Just right tasks — why the reward for good work is more good work AI-powered internal talent marketplaces at MasterCard, MetLife, and Unilever The workforce of one — segmentation and personalisation through one-on-ones People Stephan Meier — author of The Employee Advantage Alfie Kohn — author of Punished by Rewards Dart Lindsley — host of Work for Humans Jessie Zwaan — value beyond price Megan Bernard-May — people experience design Uri Gneezy — Stephan's co-author on incentives Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer — meaningful progress Jos de Blok — founder of Buurtzorg Joseph Overton — the Overton window Dan Gutman and Stuart Gibbs — the just right books Books The Employee Advantage — Stephan Meier Punished by Rewards — Alfie Kohn My Weird School series — Dan Gutman Spy School series — Stuart Gibbs Organisations Amazon, Costco, Starbucks — customer centricity case studies Eli Lilly — employee journey mapping H-E-B — the employee-centric grocer Haier / GE Appliances — autonomous micro-enterprises Buurtzorg — self-managing nurse teams MasterCard, MetLife, Unilever — internal talent marketplaces Novartis / Sandoz — one-on-one personalisation Find Stephan at stephanmeier.com, where you can subscribe to his newsletter on the human-centric future of work — each edition comes with an original stop-motion Lego movie.

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Purpose and Work with Jessica Zwaan

In this episode of Disengaged, I'm joined by Jessie Zwaan — VP of People Strategy and Operations at Leapsome and author of Built for People and Purpose and Work — to dig into the gap between the purpose companies advertise and the work people actually live. Jessie's argument cuts against a lot of HR orthodoxy. Most people don't come to work for the company mission, and pretending they do creates a dissonance employees feel but rarely voice — an Emperor's New Clothes problem she traces through the anti-work movement, which she reads as a funhouse mirror held up to HR. Drawing on Joe Pine's experience economy, she places work on a spectrum from service to experience to transformation, and argues most workplaces are experiential, and that this is fine. People are motivated by connection, autonomy, and creativity far more than by mission — so design work around what you can genuinely offer instead of selling a purpose no one believes. What we covered: Work as a product — the three symbiotic products every company runs, and why employee experience behaves like a subscription Pine's experience economy applied to work, illustrated through a cup of coffee, and where most workplaces actually sit Wrzesniewski's job, career, and calling orientations, and why performance doesn't differ across them The purpose gap, and how to close it without overreaching The anti-work movement as a funhouse mirror of HR Leveling guides and job architecture as systems of control — cognitive closure, familiarity bias, and why bare-bones wins Whether AI will fix decision-making and performance management, and why the answer is mostly no The T-shaped employee, and applying deep expertise broadly in an AI era The perception of laziness across generations (Dickens wrote fifteen novels and never worked afternoons), and the shift from individual to collective measurement People Jessie Zwaan — author of Built for People and Purpose and Work Dart Lindsley — host of Work for Humans Joe Pine — the experience economy Amy Wrzesniewski — job, career, and calling Peter Fader — author of The Customer Base Audit Stephan Meier — employee segmentation Arie Kruglanski — need for cognitive closure Rensis Likert — participative management Andy Whitlock — The Human Half Huw Slater — Oli Teresa Amabile — the progress principle Barry Schwartz — critique of rational choice Books Purpose and Work — Jessie Zwaan Built for People — Jessie Zwaan What Pay Costs — James Alexander Seechurn The Customer Base Audit — Peter Fader Come Up for Air — Nick Sonnenberg Organisations Leapsome — where Jessie leads people strategy Intuit — finding purpose within a constrained mission The Human Half — Andy Whitlock's consultancy Oli — Huw Slater's company Modern People Leader — collaborators on Jessie's Substack, PL Build

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37signals with Andrea LaRowe

In this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Andrea LaRowe - Director of People Operations at 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and Hey - to find out how a high-trust, low-control company runs day to day. Andrea's core argument: stop tying pay to performance and you strip a layer of politics out of work. 37signals benchmarks salaries once a year to the 90th percentile of the San Francisco tech market, with no negotiation and no manager involvement, and rewards tenure through a profit share. Reviews still happen, on each person's anniversary, but they're a check-in rather than a lever for pay. What drives the work is intrinsic motivation - and a small, flat, bootstrapped company built to support it. What we covered: How pay works - benchmarking to Radford's 90th percentile, no merit cycle, no negotiation, and why managers stay out of it What reviews are for once pay is off the table, and why staggering them by anniversary beats an annual scramble The five-level structure - why level three (senior) is the baseline, why level five (principal) is reserved for people moving the industry forward, and how judgment separates people at the top Profit share based on tenure rather than individual output, and why it doubles as retention How a high-trust company handles a low performer - visibility, honest conversation, skill problem vs engagement problem, and why PIPs rarely earn their keep The "manager of one" - hiring people who seek out problems without waiting to be told The 2021 decision to draw a line on political conversation at work, the roughly twenty people who left, and what it revealed about when leadership steps in Why staying private and bootstrapped for 25 years let the founders decide what the company is for, and why equity isn't the draw people assume Self-determination theory - autonomy, competence, relatedness - and how 37signals delivers all three Work as a product - treating work as something employees choose to buy, not something handed down Six-week cycles, kickoffs and heartbeats - the light mechanisms that stop a decentralized company splintering into silos Advice for anyone stuck inside a pay-for-performance cycle People referenced Andrea LaRowe - Director of People Operations, 37signals Jason Fried - co-founder and CEO, 37signals David Heinemeier Hansson - co-founder and CTO, 37signals Dart Lindsley - 11Fold, host of Work for Humans; "work as a product" Luke O'Mahoney - SapienX; "work as a product" Megan Bernard-May - Pollinate XD; "work as a product" Edward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theory Books Rework - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson First, Break All the Rules - Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman What Pay Costs - James Alexander Seechurn Organizations, podcasts and websites 37signals - bootstrapped company behind Basecamp and Hey Basecamp - project management software; Basecamp 5 launched recently Hey - email software Radford - compensation survey used for benchmarking Rework - 37signals' podcast The 37signals employee handbook - on their website Semco - Ricardo Semler's company, upward-feedback model Haier, Handelsbanken and Buurtzorg - decentralized organizations referenced

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The People Experience with Megan Bernard-May

Episode description In this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Megan Bernard-May - founder of Pollinate XD, co-creator of the PX Dojo, and the person who led people experience at the BBC - to dig into what it means to treat the experience of work the way a UX designer treats a product. Meg's core argument: people experience is another flavor of experience design. Traditional HR builds around policy, compliance, and risk management. A people experience approach starts somewhere else - finding the overlap between what's good for people, what's good for the business, and what's good for customers, then designing solutions inside that overlap rather than treating them as trade-offs. What we covered: Why traditional HR keeps shipping best-practice solutions that don't solve the problem, and what a design-led discovery process looks like instead Meg's path from architecture to UX to people experience, including the master's in organizational psychology she did to round out the work Why corporate environments resist experimentation in HR even though product teams A/B test routinely, and what makes an experiment "successful" The BBC and what productivity meant there - why getting clear on that question first matters more than any solution Pay complaints as symptoms - what's usually underneath them when benchmarking already says you're paying the market A case study from a credit analyst team where dissatisfaction with pay turned out to be a job-design problem Why dual career tracks still funnel people into management to chase money, and what flatter pay structures unlock Self-determination theory as a stress test for any HR change - does it add autonomy, competence, and connectedness, or remove them? Handelsbanken, Spotify guilds, and Haier as examples of decentralized models that lend themselves to a people experience approach Where people experience should sit organizationally - outside HR, as a guild that runs across the business Three things any HR practitioner can start doing tomorrow: ask better problem questions, stop asking for permission, document the work People referenced Megan Bernard-May - founder of Pollinate XD, co-creator of PX Dojo Adam Axton - co-creator of PX Dojo, based in Melbourne Dan Pink - "take pay off the table" framing Luke O'Mahoney - "table stakes" framing of centralized HR Edward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theory Books Purpose and Work - Jessica Zwaan What Pay Costs - James A Seechurn Drive - Daniel Pink Organizations and resources Pollinate XD - Meg's consultancy, helping organizations move people experience out of HR and into the leadership function PX Dojo - three-month cohort program for HR practitioners, structured white-belt to blue-belt Humani - online HR community in Australia where Meg moderates an experience design circle and runs a book club Handelsbanken - Swedish bank, decentralized operating units Spotify - the guild model for cross-cutting disciplines Haier - the marketplace model of the organization

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Work as a Product with Dart Lindsley

In this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Dart Lindsley - founder of 11Fold, host of the Work for Humans podcast, and former head of business architecture for HR at Cisco Systems - to dig into the idea of work as a product. Dart's core argument: companies have spent a century misclassifying their workforce. Employees fit the definition of customers, people who choose every day whether to keep buying the product called "your job." That reframe rearranges almost everything downstream - recruitment, onboarding, what managers do, how work gets allocated, and what good performance even means. What we covered: The category error at the root of modern management, and why scientific management's framing of people as factors of production still shapes practice today How employees fit the definition of customers in a multi-sided business, and the route Dart took to that model through business architecture work at Cisco The limits of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as a design framework, and what Dart found after asking thousands of people what job they hire their work to do Negative transformation - the ways work changes us into people we don't want to be - and why that belongs on the cost side of the ledger What it looks like when teams co-design their own work, including the four-dimensional bubble chart Dart uses to reallocate tasks based on what each person finds rewarding Managers as brokers optimizing flow between two customers, the paying customer and the working customer Common pushback on the model: does it scale, is it anti-capitalist, and why bother if the existing system seems to work Plus a short detour into the night Dart climbed the Golden Gate Bridge People referenced Dart Lindsley - founder of 11Fold, host of Work for Humans Edward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theory Clayton Christensen and Bobby Moesta - Jobs to Be Done framework Joe Pine - experience and transformation economies Daniel Pink - autonomy, mastery, purpose Alfie Kohn - critique of behaviorist management ("pop behaviorism") Antonio Damasio - on emotion and reason in decision-making Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton - the knowing-doing gap Ricardo Semler - Semco's participative model Bart Houlahan - co-founder of B Lab, partner at Irrational Capital Sandra Loughlin - EPAM, on data architecture and AI Semmelweis, Pasteur, Koch, Lister - the germ theory paradigm shift, used as analogy for how slowly new management ideas spread Books Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness - Richard Ryan and Edward Deci The Transformation Economy - Joe Pine Descartes' Error - Antonio Damasio The Knowing-Doing Gap - Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton Drive - Daniel Pink Punished by Rewards - Alfie Kohn Podcasts and websites Work for Humans - Dart's podcast, 190+ episodes 11fold.com - 11Fold's site, including a curated Discord community and an AI search across the Work for Humans back catalogue PX Espresso - Luke O'Mahoney's podcast, where Dart appears as a guest Irrational Capital - the ETF Dart references that tracks how employees feel about work at the companies they invest in AeroPress - the world's best coffee maker Connect with Dart on LinkedIn

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Punished by Rewards with Alfie Kohn

Alfie Kohn has spent decades dismantling the assumption that rewards work. His research across education, parenting, and the workplace remains some of the most rigorous and underread work on human motivation - required reading for anyone serious about how people actually behave. Punished by Rewards is the place to start, and it should sit on every compensation professional's shelf. In this conversation, Alfie joins me to examine why behaviorism still dominates corporate management, what B.F. Skinner got wrong, and why financial incentives so reliably erode the intrinsic motivation they're meant to amplify. We dig into the role of promotion as a control mechanism, what the pay gap signals about corporate culture, and how the sales function exports extrinsic logic into the rest of the organization. We close on the cycle that keeps reward systems entrenched and the difficulty of moving colleagues past it. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Alfie Kohn's work and books 07:12 B.F. Skinner and behaviorism 15:34 The role of promotion in corporate America 22:07 The impact of the pay gap on corporate culture 33:27 The vicious cycle of rewards and motivation

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The Equity Dilemma with Robyn Shutak

Robyn Shutak is a Partner at Infinite Equity and one of the sharpest minds in equity compensation. She joins me to talk about what happens when equity stops working the way it was designed to - and whether it was ever designed well in the first place. We get into underwater equity and the real cost of doing nothing about it. Vesting schedules built for a tenure reality that no longer exists. The gap between telling employees they are owners and what the cap table actually says. Why equity in VC-backed companies functions more like a lottery ticket than an ownership stake. And whether giving employees structured choice within their equity grants can close the gap between perceived value and actual value. We also explore a harder question: if equity compensation depends on stock price cooperation to feel real, what does that tell us about the instrument itself? Takeaways Underwater equity is not a passive problem - inaction sends its own signal and concentrates retention risk among the people you can least afford to lose Vesting was designed to protect the cap table, not retain employees - and there is little evidence it does Most employees in VC-backed companies hold less than 20% of shares collectively - calling that ownership is a stretch Structured choice within equity programs can increase perceived value without increasing spend Equity works best when companies treat it as trust, not control Chapters 00:00 Understanding Underwater Equity 42:23 Equity Compensation and Volatility 51:21 Employee Ownership in VC-Backed Companies 01:20:52 The Skeptical Side of Equity Ownership

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A Post Mortem of "The Great HR Debate"

ICYMI Kim Minnick, Kim Rohrer, and I lost a debate on pay for performance recently. We were debating against Mark Frein, Jessica Zwaan, and their team captain, Matt McFarlane. The whole thing was moderated by the amazing Jessie Schofer. So we regrouped to chat about what we might have done better, discuss some of the reactions, and we meandered into other areas too. We got into the history of how pay for performance became the default - how individualism got baked into compensation design, why corporate culture reinforces it, and what it would actually take to change it. We talked about legal personhood and how the way we define corporate success shapes everything downstream, including how we pay people. We got into bias, social media's role in calcifying bad management orthodoxy, and whether systemic change is even possible given the structures most of us are working inside. If you enjoy this and other episodes of As Discussed... please remember to subscribe, to like, and to share it with a friend that might enjoy listening - this helps tremendously.

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Pay Equity with Stefan Gaertner

Stefan Gaertner has been thinking about pay equity longer than most people have known it was a problem. He's a long-time friend, colleague, and one of the sharpest minds in the field - so when I get him on the show, we have a lot to talk about. In this episode, we get into the uneven global landscape of pay equity legislation and what that patchwork means for multinational employers trying to build coherent compensation programs. We talk pay transparency - what it's actually changing inside organizations versus what companies say it's changing. From there, we dig into the mechanics: point-factor job evaluation, salary band design, and why the methodology underneath your pay decisions matters more than most HR leaders want to admit. We also spend real time on flat organizational structures and what happens to pay equity when you strip out the career ladder - and whether that's a feature or a bug. Then we close on AI: what it can genuinely do to support pay equity analysis, where human judgment is still non-negotiable, and why handing compensation decisions to an algorithm is a different kind of equity problem. Chapters 00:00 The State of Pay Equity 08:06 Pay Transparency's Real Impact on Business 23:06 Point-Based Job Evaluation Systems 34:47 Salary Bands and Pay Fairness 43:03 Flat Structures, Career Decisions, and Pay Equity 1:10:33 AI's Role in Pay Equity

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The Post HR Generation with Luke O'Mahoney

Luke O'Mahoney is the founder of SapienX, a platform of content, courses, and community for what he calls the "post-HR generation." His central argument is that People teams should operate like Product teams - designing, measuring, and iterating on the employee experience rather than administering it through siloed functions. We dig into the limitations of the Ulrich model - the framework that split HR into Business Partners, Centers of Excellence, and Shared Services decades ago and has dominated ever since. Luke makes the case that those silos have produced systems that serve the function rather than the people, and that product thinking offers a way out. We explore the Jobs to Be Done framework applied to HR, the difference between enabling performance and trying to drive it, and why reverse engineering problems matters more than jumping to solutions. I push back on some of the measurement assumptions embedded in product thinking and whether it risks falling into the same traps that broke performance management. Whether you're a People leader feeling like the current model isn't working, or a compensation professional wondering why your systems aren't producing the outcomes you expected, there's a lot to chew on here. Contact Luke O'Mahoney: LinkedIn: Luke O'Mahoney Website: sapienx.co.uk Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Post-HR Generation 15:42 Adopting a Product Operating Model 26:27 Shifting to a Product-Centric Approach 33:49 Implementing Product-Centric Thinking 45:06 Challenges of Traditional HR Models 55:29 Cut the Cape Request 01:03:05 Measuring Success 01:18:24 Pushing Back and Asking Questions

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The Evolution of Sales Force Effectiveness with Tom Hill

This episode with Tom Hill goes into the changing landscape of Salesforce effectiveness, highlighting the shift from a transactional role to a more consultative role. It explores the impact of AI and stakeholder management on sales, as well as the shift to team-based decision-making in the sales process. The conversation delves into the challenges of aligning sales with organizational goals, the complexities of quota setting, and the impact of long sales cycles on sales crediting. It explores the need for collaboration, understanding the organization, and the evolution of sales effectiveness in response to changing market dynamics. Takeaways Salesforce effectiveness is shifting from a transactional role to a more consultative role The changing nature of sales and Salesforce effectiveness is driven by AI, stakeholder management, and the shift to a team-based decision-making process Sales Quota Setting Sales Effectiveness Sales Cycle Complexity Chapters 00:00 The Shift to Team-Based Decision-Making in Sales 38:52 Aligning Sales with Organizational Goals 45:11 Challenges of Quota Setting 55:15 Long Sales Cycles and Crediting Challenges

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Sales Compensation with James King

The conversation delves into the complexities of sales compensation, debunking myths about seller motivation, and exploring the challenges of modern sales models. It emphasizes the importance of understanding customer segmentation, sales process, and product-market fit before designing sales incentives. The role of technology in trapping uncertainty and the significance of data-driven quota setting are also highlighted. The conversation covers the negotiation of sales targets, the role of leadership and authority in sales, dealing with big deals, sales plan design and philosophy, and financial modeling and governance. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the struggles of the sales team, treating salespeople as assets, and involving finance from the beginning of the process. The conversation covers the importance of governance in decision-making, the role of Compensation Cost of Sale (CCOS) in sales compensation, the impact of pay mix and plan complexity, and finally, the motivation behind the book 'What Pay Costs' focusing on pay for performance and innovation. Takeaways Understanding the complexities of sales compensation is crucial for effective incentive design. The role of technology in modern sales and the challenges of quota setting require a balanced approach to navigate tensions and achieve sales targets. Understanding the struggles of the sales team is crucial for effective leadership Salespeople should be treated as assets, not costs Involving finance from the beginning of the sales plan design process is essential for successful financial modeling and governance Effective governance is essential for decision-making CCOS plays a crucial role in sales compensation Simplicity, alignment, and motivation are key in incentive plans The book 'What Pay Costs' explores the impact of pay for performance and the importance of innovation Chapters 00:00 Understanding Sales Compensation 19:39 Sales Compensation in Modern Sales 32:36 Navigating Tensions in Quota Setting 38:13 Negotiating Sales Targets 44:00 Sales Plan Design and Philosophy 51:16 Financial Modeling and Governance 01:01:11 The Importance of Governance 01:09:34 Pay Mix and Plan Complexity 01:20:34 The Book 'What Pay Costs'

Equity Compensation with Dan Walter

In this conversation I pepper Dan Walter with questions about the evolution of equity compensation, highlighting the early days of equity distribution and the impact of IPOs on equity compensation. We also explore the challenges in valuing equity, the impact of high valuations on equity compensation, and the use of equity as a wealth creation tool. We discuss the use of equity as a differentiating component of rewards in the tech industry, the concept of employee stock purchase plans, and the evolution of equity compensation in the tech industry. We delve into the challenges and misconceptions surrounding equity as a retention mechanism and the need for improved communication and education around equity. Finally we explore the historical context of equity, its intended purpose, and the evolving landscape of equity compensation in modern organizations.