July 15, 2025 • 47 mins
What if we stopped designing jobs like checklists—and started designing them like products employees want to buy?
In this episode of Your Work Friends, we talk with Dart Lindsley, CEO and co-founder of 11 Fold, the creator of Multi-Sided Management and he's the host of the Work for Humans podcast, Dart breaks down why it’s time to stop treating employees like “inputs” and start treating them like customers—with all the same thoughtfulness, strategy, and design we use in product development.
We explore:
- Why the “job description” is the most broken tool in HR
- How to redesign work so it actually meets people’s needs
- What leaders get wrong about performance and retention
- How managers can become designers—and what that looks like in practice
If you're a manager, HR leader, or ambitious professional who wants to shape the future of work—not just survive it—this episode is a must-listen.
🔗 Connect with Dart Lindsley: 11fold.com and the Work For Humans Podcast
💬 Join our community: yourworkfriends.com
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so then I said if employees are customers, what
are they buying?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to your Work Friends.
I'm Francesca Ranieri and I'mMel Plett, and we are breaking
down the now and next of work.
So you get ahead, mel.
Have you ever been on achairlift?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yes, and I am terrified of chairlifts
Terrified.
Last fall I went to themountains in Massachusetts.
We decided let's have a scenicview of the foliage on a
chairlift.
I literally was shitting bricks, white, knuckling it, holding
(00:53):
on to the side, terrified, whileeveryone else is like what a
view, what a beautiful view.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, yeah, don't not a fan, yeah, yeah you listen, I
grew up in illinois like skihills were landfills that had
whole tugs.
So, like I've been onchairlifts before, there's
nothing like going on achairlift where I'm like, oh
fuck, I forgot, I, I'm afraid ofheights.
We were in mount hood thisweekend and did the chairlift up
to the 7 000 foot mark on mounthood.
(01:19):
Oh my god.
It's also a little differentwhen you're with a
seven-year-old new, new fear ofheights realized and you're like
where's the seatbelt on thisthing?
No shit, where's the seatbelt?
Yeah, I'm automatically beinglike there's about 72 ways I'm
going to die today.
Yeah, understood, oh my God.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Listen.
We met with Dart Linsley, whois awesome.
He's the CEO and co-founder of11 Folds and the creator of
Multi-Sided Management.
He's the host of the Work forHumans podcast, which is rad and
you should listen to it, andhe's an author and a speaker.
And he wrote an article inHarvard Business Review back in
2024 talking about reimaginingwork as a product, which
(02:01):
immediately piqued my interestbecause I'm like, all right,
we're hearing a lot about gigeconomy, portfolio careers, what
are we saying?
What are we saying here?
And he's really developed asystem to help develop work as a
product, which I foundinteresting.
I don't know.
I loved this conversation.
I think it's fun to thinkthrough some of the concepts
that he shared with us.
Here's a couple of things thatstood out to me.
(02:22):
One, work as a product thatemployees buy into.
Start thinking about youremployees as customers, which
you and I talk about often forgood employee experience, and
then organizations getting moreclear about the jobs that
actually need to be done.
That, to me, is huge, becausewe have a lot of erroneous job
(02:43):
profiles out there or jobdescriptions that are just for
compliance but don't really talkabout the actual work that
you're being hired to do, andthat's a real big gap in my mind
in the workplace experience.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, I love this because it really does challenge
some of the default assumptionsabout corporate life.
We historically have treatedemployees as inputs instead of
people with their own goals andneeds, and so if we're not even
assuming that people have theirown needs, their own wants
coming to it, and if you aren'teven clear about the product
(03:16):
you're creating, it's alwaysgoing to be a mismatch.
Getting really clear on what isthe product, or the experience
we have here, can only be betterfor both parties, especially
now when most organizationsreally need to be thinking about
what does work look like,especially with AI and AI agents
.
This is the time where everyonegets a clean slate.
(03:37):
We're all redoing this together.
Think about your jobs asproducts.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, dart's been able to create something that
measures this in real time andit's really powerful With that.
Here's Dart.
Dart, it's so nice to see you.
(04:03):
How have you been?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
dart, it's so nice to see you.
How have you been it?
I've been super busy goingaround the world talking, and
I'm very happy to be sittingback in my own office drinking
my own coffee and talking to youvery nice thanks for being with
us on your return, and nothinglike being in your own bed,
right like just unbelievablespace.
Yeah, much betterarts.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You've said that we need to stop designing jobs like
tasks and start designing themlike products, and I'm wondering
what's the origin story for youwith this work?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, the origin is I spent 10 years after college in
the literary arts and so I wasan artist, and then our twins
were born.
I started working forcorporations and I always felt a
little bit like I had to holdthem in tongs a little bit away
from me, so I always stayed alittle bit distant and tried not
to be absorbed by them tooentirely.
(04:58):
When I started working in HRorganizations and I thought that
the main job of human resourceswas to get the talent necessary
for the company to achieve itsstrategy, and to simplify that
problem, we framed it as apipeline problem.
Essentially, we turn HR into aprocurement and maintenance
(05:20):
function of an input and we usewords like assets and human
capital and resources.
And all of the early managementthinkers did exactly the same
thing.
And it was when I was workingas the head of business
architecture for Cisco Systemsthat, first of all, I was seeing
that things weren't workingvery well.
I was doing this work inbusiness architecture, and in
(05:42):
business architecture you buildthese giant models that describe
how the company works, andemployees kept showing up in two
places.
And they did show up internallylike an input, but they showed
up externally as a customer.
I don't want to geek out on ittoo much, but it explained why
(06:03):
employees were showing up as acustomer, that we've framed
employees as inputs toproduction.
But inputs to production it'sbasically it's a category error,
and that's a really big problem.
Category errors are errors wemake that are so fundamental in
our reasoning that all ourreasoning that follows will be
(06:24):
flawed.
And here's the category error.
Inputs to production areinanimate and they have no
experience.
Employees are alive, they havesubjective, first-person
experiences and they are free tostop working for us at any time
(06:45):
.
They are free to stopexchanging value by not taking
the job, by leaving the job orjust not paying attention to the
job, and that's so differentfrom an input to production.
What is it?
It's a customer, and thatopened up all of the research
that I've done since then, whichis really digging deeply into
(07:09):
what it is that people want fromwork, so that we can design it
better.
We're good at product.
Look around.
Just if you look around, you'llsee that we've made a million
products.
We know how to do it.
So that's when it happened.
It happened over a decade.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
One of the things I'm wondering about is that they're
a customer and they're buyingwork.
Not to be totally esoteric, butwhat is the work they're buying
?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Expand on that, because that could mean a couple
of different things.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Do you find that everybody has the same
definition of work?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I find that nobody has the same definition of work.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So this is what's interesting, because when I
think about a customer or evenlike a product journey, when
we're like doing productdevelopment and you're thinking
about a consumer lifecycle,taking them from awareness all
the way through loyal, comingback into the cycle, all this
could just like you're talkingabout it feels like what they're
buying is stable, right.
(08:13):
In a way, it's like they'rebuying the Sephora summer
Fridays lip gloss or somethingof this sort.
How do you design for that wheneverybody has a different
definition of what?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
they're buying.
The question I asked thatopened up a lot of doors, and
then let me say how peopleanswered it and then what some
of the patterns that emergedwere.
If that's okay, yeah, please.
So the question I have askedmany hundreds, probably almost a
thousand people is what job doyou hire your job to do for you?
And people say what?
(08:45):
And so I say, yeah, your jobhires you to do something for it
.
What do you hire it to do foryou?
And this is a product marketingquestion that was developed by
Clayton Christensen and BobMesta at Harvard, and what it
does is, instead of askingpeople like, how do you want me
to design this cup, ask themwhat they want to do with the
(09:05):
cup, and you'll be able to findinnovative solutions for what
they really want.
And a lot of the ways peopleanswer is very unexpected, which
is I hire my job to pay thebills.
I hire the job to take care ofmy family.
I hire my job to learn.
But they get more and more.
(09:25):
There's 35, 40 different thingsthat people answer when they
answer this question.
I hire my job to give meinteresting puzzles to solve or
to give me a worthy opponent.
I hire my job to pay my debtsto my family, who got me here to
show them that I have achievedwhat they worked hard for me to
(09:45):
achieve.
And the thing is that thesemight sound close to each other,
but from a designer'sperspective, they're actually
distinct.
I hire my job to invent.
Some are simple I hire my jobso that I can live where I want
to live.
Sometimes they're sponsoring myvisa, or sometimes it's just I
go, I want to live near thebeach.
I could go on and on with these, but what's important about
(10:08):
them?
I'll just tell one more story,which I tell all the time,
because it's one of thesurprising ones.
One person I interviewed and, bythe way, I've never interviewed
somebody where they gave me ananswer and I never heard that
answer again.
I always hear it again thisperson was the first person to
say I hire my job to pretend.
And I said what do you mean?
(10:29):
I hire your job to pretend?
He says yeah, I like to go towork and I like to pretend to be
a vice president.
And I pointed out to him thathe is in fact a vice president.
He's been a vice president forFortune 50s and he says no, I'm
a jazz musician for Fortune 50s,and he says, no, I'm a jazz
musician.
He says I spent my 20s and 30son the stage and I learned to
(10:49):
love an adoring audience and soI like to put on my vice
president costume and I like toget up with a microphone and the
lights and I like to be adored,to be adored.
(11:11):
So there's a lot of differentanswers, and not only are there
35, 40 different things thatpeople want from work, they want
them in combination.
On average, most people wanteight, some people want as many
as 20 of these things, which maybe impossible.
Many of them are mutuallyexclusive.
And the second question Istarted asking more recently is
(11:32):
what does your job cost you?
Because when you buy a product,you want it to get the job done
and you want to buy it at areasonable cost, and there is as
much diversity almost in termsof what work costs us as what
the value is that we get out ofit.
(11:53):
Okay, that's a problem.
If you're a product designer,how do you design a product
that's different for everysingle person?
To some extent, it's a scaleproblem.
Like, how could I possiblyscale to that?
And I'm going to say, first ofall, we have the means to scale
in managers, so the means toscale is already in place.
There are businesses out therethat do this Doctors Doctors
(12:16):
deal with a hundred differentkinds of things that people need
help with, and they do adiagnosis and they customize it
for each individual person, andso it's not impossible to do
this.
There are businesses that dothis.
Physical therapists do this,sports massage people do this,
but changing the role ofmanagers it is, and also, to
(12:41):
some extent, employees.
It's very possible for managersand employees to co-design work
.
That is way better, and what ittakes is it takes mindfulness.
The manager changes their rolefrom being a top-down controller
of an asset, so the org chartshows them above with boxes down
(13:24):
below, and instead we're goingto flip the org chart.
They're going to be in asupport role, and they have two
big roles.
One is being a broker betweentwo markets now, so they're
orchestrating the value thatflows from their employees, from
the team, to the traditionalcustomer, but also the value of
the work that flows from thetraditional customer to their
team, and so they becomeconscious of two flows of value
and are working to optimize bothof them, and they become
designers, which is that theynow need to be able to do need
finding with their teams,understand their differences and
teams and managers togetherwork to build better work.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I love this idea of kind of product design because
when I'm hearing two things andit's interesting we talked to
Bob and Michael about their bookJob Moves and the work that
they're doing, especially aroundinterviewing your go-to
organization and really figuringout what you want, and then is
it a fit, and what I'm hearingyou talk about is you're a
(14:07):
product designer, you're productdesigning your career by
getting very in touch with whatdo you want personally, your
eight things around work.
But I'm also hearing thatmanagers are now product
designers for their people andbeing that broker between the
work that needs to be done andthe ecosystem that they need to
(14:31):
do it in.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
That's correct I know we want to, oh, go ahead.
And I was going to say and Ilove what they're talking about.
In my experience, you cannotdiscern from interviewing a
company whether they're going togive you what you want, because
it's much more fine-grainedthan that.
And so what you want is acompany that consciously
(14:52):
allocates work based upon yourinterests and who will work with
you over time as your interestsevolve.
So it's one of the things aboutjobs to be done.
Theory is that many of thethings that people want are not
even an attribute of them.
It's an attribute of theirsituation, and so when I had
little kids, I needed one kindof work and I had one risk
profile, and when they were incollege, I had a different risk
(15:14):
profile.
And now that they'reself-supporting, I have a
different risk profile and Ihave different things that I can
actually open up my work to dofor me.
I think it's incredibly hard totell before you go to a company
whether or not they're going tobe able to really give you what
you want.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Oh, to your very good point on the premise that this
is a living, breathing organismnot only in and of ourselves,
but also in the relationship andthe work that needs to be done.
The name of the game is it'sever evolving.
It's not static, so you can't.
I know.
We want to talk about theemployee as a customer a little
bit more in depth.
I'm very curious, though, and Iwant to make sure we get to
(15:49):
this is we're designed right nowfor very static.
Hr is driving all of this world, so what happens to HR?
What happens to HR?
What happens to HR?
Do?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
we blow up?
Do we blow up?
It's a bi-directional.
The thing about a two-sidedbusiness is it has two flows of
value, and one flow of value isstill an input to production
flow of value, which is that youneed to find the talent, the
people who can get the job done.
So recruiting is still reallyimportant, but now recruiting
(16:23):
changes.
So what's going to happen isthat there's a lot of
traditional things that we do aspractices and services in HR
that will still be there becausethey with the skills that we
want you to have.
(16:46):
That's actually not how you sellproducts.
If Amazon came to you and saidI'm going to just advertise the
currency that we take and howyou can pay for this thing that
we're going to give you, that'snot how products are sold.
Products are sold by tellingyou, describing the product,
showing you specifications, andthose specifications are going
(17:07):
to think this is the kind ofpuzzles we're solving here.
This is the kinds of messeswe're tidying.
We're going to give you a stageor we're not going to give you
a stage.
It's describing the actualproduct that is available to you
if you come and work for us andI did this, in fact, I've done
this multiple times and some ofthe managers that I've taught
have done this.
I had somebody.
I needed a Six Sigma black belt, a master black belt, and I
(17:30):
found one who was just fantastic.
And I interviewed him and Iasked him what do you want to
get out of this job?
And he says I want to build thebest process design learning
education system in the world.
And I said you know what?
Right now I'm not sure I havethe budget to actually set up a
learning organization aroundprocess design.
(17:53):
And so I said right now I don'thave a product I can sell you
that I think is going to satisfyyour needs.
I said, as soon as I do, I willcome back to you because he was
perfect, he was everything andI wanted, so I didn't hire him
just because of what he could dofor me.
I held off and three monthslater, when I knew I had the
budget, I called him back.
He joined my team and hedesigned the best process design
(18:17):
curriculum in the world for mycompany.
And so the whole that's like anexample no-transcript.
(18:44):
I'm going to give you a jobrole and I'm going to have you
be in that box and I'm going totell you what skills you need to
have, at what level, to performin that job role, and everybody
in your job role.
I'm going to tell the samething and I'm going to measure
everybody against the skills andcapabilities in that job role
(19:07):
and essentially, what I've justdone is I've told everybody I
want you all to be the same, Iwant you to aspire to be
identical to each other and ifyou do things that are above and
beyond your job description, Ican't really see that it's hard
for me to reward that.
But the more you become thismodel that I have in my head of
(19:29):
what that role is like everybodyelse.
Thinking.
Thinking.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
For the kind of naysayers out there I will say,
or just for someone that'sincredibly numbers driven how do
I make money?
How do I make sure people arebringing in if it's like a
salesperson that they'rebringing in 200 million dollars
in sales because they have toand be their best self?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
sales people are a good one to pick because they're
right there where the dollarsare, yeah, and so that's the
definition of performance forthem is that they're winning
those dollars.
Let's pick somebody deeper inthe organization.
The truth is so.
First of all, one thing beforeI go on multi-sided businesses
are totally common, and it'stotally common for one of the
(20:25):
customers in a multi-sidedbusiness to not be revenue
generating.
Let's take ad-based media.
There's the advertiser, butthen there's the reader, and the
reader's acquired at a loss.
And how do you measure yourreadership?
You measure them in part, byand by the way.
That's nice, because they'resubscribers and employees are
(20:45):
subscribers to the job work.
So what you're looking at isyou're looking at customer
measures and product measures.
Are we successfully sellingthis product into the
marketplace?
What does it mean to sell thisproduct into the marketplace?
What it means is people arepaying us for it, but employees
don't pay with money.
Employees pay with attentionand labor and wisdom and
(21:07):
creativity.
And in fact, just lately I'vebeen on a rant about
discretionary effort.
Discretionary effort is I wantyou to work a longer day.
What we're talking about hereis if you are finding the work
really rewarding, you're goingto bring more of yourself to the
work and that's the kind ofcontribution that you want from
this particular customer.
(21:28):
So you have customer measuresand product measures, just like
you would anyplace else.
It's just they're going to be.
You're going to have to livewith the fact that some of them
are not going to be denominatedin dollars, other measures of
performance, and the thing isthat this whole thing about
profit profit is a laggingindicator of a healthy company,
(21:50):
especially a healthy multi-sidedmarket, which is that you can
actually squeeze money out of acompany in the short term, but
if you're not feeding the peoplewho work there and if you're
not creating customer loyalty inyour traditional customer, it's
just a matter of time beforeyou falter.
And so a lot of this is notabout the quarterly revenue.
(22:13):
It's about one or two yearsrevenue.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Actually, the boss-employee relationship is
actually a really good use casethere, as you're speaking.
When I think of a performanceindicator for a leader, that
comes down to retention, how isyour team growing?
There are very different thingsthat you would measure in this
case.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
And one of the things that the teams that I teach
measure is how rewarding is thework this month and if some
category of work for a teammember goes into the red or the
yellow, what's the time toresolution of that?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
What are some of the mindset shifts that have to
happen within organizations toget them to start thinking of
employees like a customer?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So where did this come from in the first place?
The idea that employees areinputs.
Where it comes from is what I'mgoing to call situated
reasoning, and situatedreasoning I'm abusing the term
because situated reasoning issupposed to be the wise
reasoning that we do in contextand I have to tie a knot.
(23:20):
But it's contextual because Iknow that it's raining and
that's what it's supposed to be,but I'm using it another way,
which is situated reasoning.
We work in large companies.
All of us work in a piece ofthe large company and within
that piece of the company wehave local incentives and we
have local information.
(23:42):
It's always incomplete,no-transcript, which is I turned
(24:06):
.
It's impossible to seeeverybody as a unique human
being.
So you turn them into numbers,and that's what I did, and so
that's what leaders have askedHR to do and that's what we have
done.
So the real problem is, and thereal change is, getting away
from the situated reasoning andstanding above the problem space
(24:27):
and recognizing it, not withthis, what I consider to be a
naive perspective of how thecompany runs, but actually a
holistic perspective, which isto say it's that the exchange of
value is much broader anddeeper than a simple purchasing
transaction of employees.
(24:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
What do you say to those leaders that are still in
the old mindset of you're luckyto have a job here.
They're not willing to do this.
What message do you have forthose folks?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It's interesting because I've heard it in a
couple of different ways.
One is people who work here areso entitled.
What message do you have forthose folks?
It's interesting because I'veheard it in a couple of
different ways.
One is people who work here areso entitled.
I give them all this stuff andthey're not thankful and they
quit.
And so one of the things I saythere is you would never say
(25:23):
about a customer they're notbuying my product because
they're lazy.
You'd say about a customerthey're not buying my product
because something needs to beimproved in my product.
And, in fact, this idea which Ilove, which is you should work
for me and my objectives, evenif you hate every day.
Who's entitled in thatstatement?
No shit.
So that's one thing.
Yeah, no shit.
(25:59):
And we're not.
Yes, I do think it's a moralquestion whether or not we work
this way, but beyond that, it'sthe health of your business and
the long-term health of yourbusiness.
And in fact, I had BartHoulihan on my podcast Work for
Humans, and he's the person whofounded B-Lab, among other
things, but he also has nowfounded an exchange-traded fund
(26:24):
that invests in companies wherethe employees hit certain
measures of finding their workrewarding and those companies do
better over time.
And in fact, there's a giantstack of research that shows
that companies do better whenthe people who work there like
the work, and it's really just,it's a naive perspective to
(26:45):
think that people don't have tolike the work.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
We couldn't agree more with you on that, because
we talk about that all the time,dart.
It seems like with every studythat just continues to drive
home this same message.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
But then you then see the headlines right, even
though we know RTO, no one wantsRTO and they want flexibility.
But you have these leaders, andit's not just I don't know if
they have earplugs in.
I always think of the weddingcrashes where they're like
earmuffs.
They're just earmuffing it, notlistening.
How do you get through?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
How do you break through?
It is the frame.
Yeah, and this is myfundamental belief.
Yeah.
That until we destabilize theframe as employees as inputs and
replace that with employees ascustomers, the frame of
employees as inputs will alwaystend to underestimate employee
agency, underestimate employeecomplexity.
(27:42):
It will at every single pointtry to simplify the problem by
turning people into numbers andby trying to get everybody to be
better inputs.
And better inputs means morethe same, more uniform, and we
just buy them and then we'redone, and then we're done, and
so that whole mindset is anabsolutely blinding mindset.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
It is it makes you dumb.
It's so interesting because I,as someone who I have a strong
background in talent acquisitionright.
So I've spent manyconversations with candidates
between hiring managers andyou're in a unique role because
your good recruiters areunderstanding what the business
needs, but also what theindividual needs, because you
(28:27):
might make a bad hire if it'snot a match.
So that's your kind of job,like.
I see recruiters at the heartof helping turn this shift,
because they're already in aspace where they see talent as
customers because they'reselling them this opportunity,
but they also need to really, ifthey want talent that stays
(28:47):
right or that really aligns withthe business goals, they need
to understand what the talentneeds to thrive as well.
And so there's almost like thisunique it sounds, and you tell
me I'd be curious to hear whatyou think there's a real
opportunity where talentacquisition can start the shift.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, talent acquisition gets it more than
any other function because theyare there at the point of sale,
and so they get to beface-to-face with individuals as
opposed to seeing them far awayas numbers, and they see what
people want.
Now, they don't actuallynecessarily they have a tendency
to go forward with here's thepay, here's the job, here's the
(29:24):
title, here's all this stuff.
Not what job do you hire yourjob to do for you, and things
would be better if we did that.
But there's another piece tothis, which is there's sales,
which is recruiting.
You're selling this product oryou're selling subscriptions to
the product actually, and thenTheodore Leavitt said that
(29:44):
sales' job is to get rid ofstuff the company has, and
marketing's job is to make surethat they have stuff they can
get rid of.
Recruiters are put into aposition where they have to sell
a product that they actuallydon't know very much about the
specifications of that product,but also they don't have any
(30:05):
control over the quality of thatproduct that they're selling.
And so there needs to be a muchbetter link between the sales
team and the marketing team, andthere needs to be a marketing
team, which there really isn't.
What the rest of HR is doing isessentially treating workforce
as things, even though and letme just say something I'm HR, so
(30:28):
when I throw rocks at HR, I'mthrowing rocks at me.
But the thing I want to say isevery person in HR knows people
are people and knows people arehumans.
We have built a system thattreats people as things and we
have to function within thatsystem, and it actually causes
us moral harm, moral injury, forus to do that in any cases.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, do you think AI is going to exacerbate this?
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yes.
So let me say the two differentmindsets are going to apply AI
very differently.
The two different mindsets aregoing to apply AI very
differently.
The mindset of employees areinputs to production and I wish
they were more like things isgoing to be delighted by
replacing them with actualthings.
And I think it was who saidthat improved means to
unimproved ends doesn't get youa better outcome.
(31:21):
And in employees or customersmodel and work as a product
model, we're going to look at AIvery differently.
So one of the things I've doneis I've interviewed a lot of
people about what is yourfavorite tool of the trade.
Tools play a very interestingrole in work, which is there's
the work, there's me doing thework.
And then I had this mediatingthing, which is the tool I'm
(31:45):
using.
And so I was interviewing mybarber because nobody gets away
from my interviews and I saidwhat's your favorite tool of the
trade?
And he said it's these Hansoshears right here.
And I said why?
And he says clippers are wayfaster, they're really good at
doing hair fast, but these Hansoshears help me to express
myself better, I can be moreexpressive, I'm more in control
(32:09):
of what I'm doing with these.
And he says, and I'm willing topay a lot for them.
They're $1,800 and I have 12different pair and he says they
fit just right in my hand andthey help me to be the creator
that I want to be.
That's what AI is in a employeesor customers world, which is
(32:30):
are we giving you the tools toto amplify yourself?
Now you're bringing your wholeself to work.
Are we giving you the tools tohelp you to be more expressive,
to get the outcomes that youreally want, and do those tools
fit your hand in a way that isergonomic for you?
So it's not replacing inputswith dumb machines, it's
(33:04):
amplifying whole humans.
So do I think we're going toget this wrong?
Yes, yeah, you're seeing itevery day.
Right, we're going to get itwrong.
It's part of the reason why Ialways argue put the capability
to use ai in the hands of thepeople and they will build the
tools that they need to fittheir hand and and satisfy their
needs and that's what we'rehearing left and right.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Those conversations are not happening.
One of the things, dart, thatreally struck me in your article
(33:44):
from a almost a year ago nowright, was that bubble chart,
because you showed somethingthat was very tangible, right in
the hands of a leader to beable to support some like their
team, being a customer, like inreal time, and you can make
real-time changes.
Can you share more about withour listeners about that bubble
chart and how this is possible,so they can get a picture of how
(34:06):
you can operationalizesomething like this?
Speaker 1 (34:08):
The bubble chart first asks where's your
attention going team?
So what are all the categoriesof work that are in your
portfolio?
And most organizations haveapproximately 20 different
categories of work that they do.
The size of the bubble on thebubble chart is an indication of
how much of our attention isgoing to track your hours.
(34:34):
We're trying to track yourattention.
If it's keeping you awake atnight, that counts.
If you're tucking your kidsinto bed and you're thinking
about it, that counts.
So it's attention.
That's.
The size of the bubble is howaligned is that category of work
(34:59):
to the purpose of the company?
How much is it contributing tothe purpose of the company?
The vertical axis is how muchis this contributing to the
purpose of the team?
So what we're really looking atthere is that your team can do
a lot of different kinds of workand some of it you're uniquely
qualified to do.
That's the highest margin workthat you can do, and if you
start being asked to do workthat you're too expensive to do
(35:21):
or you're not as good at asother teams, it's lower margin
work for you and you shouldreally consider whether or not
you should be doing that work.
The color of the bubble is howrewarding is the work,
particularly to the person whois finding it the least
rewarding?
And on a monthly basis, theteam gets together and looks at
this Are we doing stuff that'saligned to the purpose of the
(35:43):
company?
Are we paying our attention tothat?
Are we paying attention tostuff that is really our unique
value, and is any of it notrewarding for us?
And the whole team workstogether to resolve a category
of work that goes into theyellow or red and it's perfect.
I actually have a really goodstory I'm super excited about
(36:05):
Like sometimes it's super simplewhich is something goes a
bubble, goes into the yellow andwe say what's going on.
And the person says you know,I'm working in a time zone on
this project that takes methrough breakfast with my kids,
and he said I'm the person whomakes breakfast and so that's a
hardship in my family.
That work is costing me.
I like the project, but it'scosting me more than I want to
(36:26):
pay.
And so somebody on the team whohappens to be in Singapore says
, oh, I can take that work, it'sa lot closer to my time zone.
I'm really interested in thatproject.
They swap projects and it goesgreen.
It's a perfect example of ateam acting real time based upon
local information and havingthe freedom to do that.
But here's a deeper story, andI just got the rest of the story
(36:48):
this last week Somebody on myteam, their bubble went red and
that's serious.
Red is bad.
We call that walking on glass,and that's serious.
Red is bad.
We call that walking on glass.
And she said Mike, the clientis bullying me, common, yes, and
(37:19):
so I.
This is a case where the teamcan't solve that.
I'm the only person who cansolve that.
So what I did is I went and Ispoke to the person who was
doing the bullying and I saidlet's work out a way that you
can communicate differently.
And I attended meetings for alittle while to make sure that
it got better.
So that bubble went green.
So I was at a conference inStockholm last week.
And who walks up to me?
The bully?
And she said and honestly itbrings tears to my eyes, I swear
to God.
She said look, you talked to meabout one of your employees a
(37:44):
number of years ago this waseight years ago and she said I
want you to know I was having areally hard time.
I was new to the company and Iwas having serious mental issues
right then, which I get becauseI was too.
I was new to the company tooand I was too, and she said you
(38:05):
were the only person who waskind to me at that company at
that time and you really helpedme to find a way forward by
being mindful about what wasgoing on and intervening.
Everybody got better.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
And you had the real-time data to help you do
that.
To facilitate.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
It's just by paying attention.
You didn't know that politicsare a cost to some people.
And somebody's bubble goes redbecause, oh, this is a really
political product project andthat's.
I hate that.
Okay, let's put that on thelist of things that are a cost
for you and let's see what wecan do to resolve it.
And it's not always just moveoff of the project.
Sometimes it's why do politicstrigger you?
(38:51):
Could you potentially find away to grow and learn to move in
a political space?
And those are complicatedconversations and most of the
time you don't want to say thebubble went red and it's because
of you.
You want to say let's figureout how to fix it.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, the beauty is that it facilitates either a
coaching conversation, itfacilitates team camaraderie, it
facilitates the relationshipbetween the boss and employee
and having healthy conversationsand discussions for development
and growth.
There's so much, and thenultimately, that trickles out
throughout the organization,right?
Because if everyone's boughtinto this and they're supporting
(39:32):
each other, you're really justcontinually, in this design
space, helping work to be betterfor everybody, which leads to
better business outcomesultimately.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
And what's beautiful about the bubble chart to me is
that it is an absolutemanifestation of the multi-sided
business, of a multi-sidedmanagement system.
You are asking are we doing thehighest margin work that we can
do?
And you are also asking are weadequately serving the needs of
(40:01):
the employee, customer?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Listen, we're going to jump right in.
How do you feel about doing aquick, rapid round of questions?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Let's do it Okay, let's go.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
It's 2030, dart, what's work going to look like?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Can I pick 2035?
Because I do think it's goingto take a little longer In 2035,
in many ways things won't havechanged at all, but a large
proportion of companies willstart recognizing employees as
customers, and that's what thepath that I'm on, and I think
it'll take a little while andall sorts of things change when
you do that, and maybe we'lltalk about some of those today.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Sounds good, and employee as a customer is on one
of my first questions for you,so we will.
What's one thing aboutcorporate culture you'd like to
see just die already?
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Framing employees as inputs to production.
Not only do I think it'ssomething that's not effective,
I've come to believe that it'simmoral to treat people as
things.
That's, in fact, my whole motto, which is ending work that
treats people like things.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I love it.
Yeah, there's a lot ofdehumanizing language that's
used to refer to people withinorganizations, it seems at times
.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Yes, it's absolutely the dominant metaphor.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
What's the greatest opportunities that most
organizations are missing out onright now?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Allocating work to people in such a way that it
matches their passions.
We're a lot like a shoe store,where you go in and we just hand
people a box of shoes and theydon't try them on, they don't
look for fashion and they don'teven know what size they are,
and so they walk away with shoesthey don't fit.
(42:05):
They don't like them.
It's practically free to pay alittle bit of attention to how
you, to what people want, andthen allocate work with
mindfulness to that, and andit's just this dumb thing that
we don't do.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah, I remember, does anyone?
And Francesca, because youworked at Nike.
But remember when Nike firstcame out with that you could
custom design your sneakercolors, features, even down to
the laces right, like Dart in anideal world.
Do you see that being like ajob thing?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yes, at least let's get shoes that fit.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, that's a good.
Let's start there.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
We'll start with fitting.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, that's a good place.
All right, we're going to get alittle more personal here.
Hopefully you don't mind.
What music are you listening to?
What's on repeat on yourplaylist right now?
Speaker 1 (42:54):
I get obsessed with particular bands and right now I
am obsessed with a Korean folkpop band called Lee Nalchi
L-E-E-N-A-L-C-H-I.
Okay, start with their songTiger is Coming it will blow
(43:15):
your mind.
I don't promise you'll like it.
Is coming, it will blow yourmind, I don't promise you'll
like it.
I've hardly shown it Like I'mso into it and I show it to
people and almost nobody likesit, but I just love it.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
That's what matters, right it's opera, korean folk
opera.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Okay, with a bass line.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Ooh, interesting.
All right, I know what I'mdoing this afternoon.
I gotta go check that out.
Now I'm going to go for my why.
What are you reading?
It could be old-fashioned book,Kindle or audiobook.
What's on your list?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
So I was a literature major and I read an awful lot
of very trashy science fiction.
But there is a kind of sciencefiction that I think is that I'm
loving, and so it's called it'sHope Punk.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
I'll check it out.
I actually find myself staringaway from science fiction
because of the experience fromthe 80s and 90s, where it's just
so depressing to me.
So I will check it out becauseI think like knowing that
there's hope behind it soundslike a good change.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, Check it out because I think, knowing that
there's hope behind it soundslike a good change.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Yeah, it's really lovely.
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Who do you really admire?
I happen to be doing somestudies right now of large
systems change, and so, becauseof that, the person who pops to
mind right now for me is LouisPasteur.
More than anybody I can thinkof, he overturned a dominant
paradigm and saved billions oflives, and he did it by just
(44:50):
doggedly doing the work, and sothat's what comes to mind right
now.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
What's one piece of advice that you've received that
you'd like to share with others?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
One of my favorites, especially for people who work
in corporations, was, when, indoubt, take the high road.
I remember I went to my managerand I said look, I've got these
two options I can go this way,or I can go this way, and this
way is a little bad.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
And he said, when in doubt, take the high road.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
And ever since I have done that.
Smart advice, it's nice, it'ssimple to apply If you've got
two options ahead of you and oneseems low road just take the
high road, Michelle Obama.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
when they go low, we go high.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Okay, maybe she had the same manager.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Dart, thanks so much for joining us today.
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
11foldcom Work for Humans is where this
conversation is going on and sothere's 150 episodes there.
All right, we'll post all thoselinks so you can like and
subscribe to all of DART'splaces and for the article DART.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Well, we're going to include that too.
Oh good, people should read it.
It's so good.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
It is good.
Yeah, we went deeper into ittoday than we were able in the
article.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
This episode was produced, edited and all things
by us myself, mel Plett andFrancesca Rennery.
Our music is by Pink Zebra andif you loved this conversation
and you want to contribute yourthoughts with us, please do.
You can visit us atyourworkfriendscom, but you can
(46:35):
also join us over on LinkedIn.
We have a LinkedIn communitypage and we have the TikToks and
Instagrams.
So please join us in thesocials and if you like this and
you've benefited from thisepisode and you think someone
else can benefit from thisepisode, please rate and
subscribe.
We'd really appreciate it.
That helps keep us going.
(46:55):
Take care, friends.
Bye friends.
Bye friends.
And so then I said if employees are customers, what
are they buying?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to your Work Friends.
I'm Francesca Ranieri and I'mMel Plett, and we are breaking
down the now and next of work.
So you get ahead, mel.
Have you ever been on achairlift?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yes, and I am terrified of chairlifts
Terrified.
Last fall I went to themountains in Massachusetts.
We decided let's have a scenicview of the foliage on a
chairlift.
I literally was shitting bricks, white, knuckling it, holding
(00:53):
on to the side, terrified, whileeveryone else is like what a
view, what a beautiful view.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, yeah, don't not a fan, yeah, yeah you listen, I
grew up in illinois like skihills were landfills that had
whole tugs.
So, like I've been onchairlifts before, there's
nothing like going on achairlift where I'm like, oh
fuck, I forgot, I, I'm afraid ofheights.
We were in mount hood thisweekend and did the chairlift up
to the 7 000 foot mark on mounthood.
(01:19):
Oh my god.
It's also a little differentwhen you're with a
seven-year-old new, new fear ofheights realized and you're like
where's the seatbelt on thisthing?
No shit, where's the seatbelt?
Yeah, I'm automatically beinglike there's about 72 ways I'm
going to die today.
Yeah, understood, oh my God.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Listen.
We met with Dart Linsley, whois awesome.
He's the CEO and co-founder of11 Folds and the creator of
Multi-Sided Management.
He's the host of the Work forHumans podcast, which is rad and
you should listen to it, andhe's an author and a speaker.
And he wrote an article inHarvard Business Review back in
2024 talking about reimaginingwork as a product, which
(02:01):
immediately piqued my interestbecause I'm like, all right,
we're hearing a lot about gigeconomy, portfolio careers, what
are we saying?
What are we saying here?
And he's really developed asystem to help develop work as a
product, which I foundinteresting.
I don't know.
I loved this conversation.
I think it's fun to thinkthrough some of the concepts
that he shared with us.
Here's a couple of things thatstood out to me.
(02:22):
One, work as a product thatemployees buy into.
Start thinking about youremployees as customers, which
you and I talk about often forgood employee experience, and
then organizations getting moreclear about the jobs that
actually need to be done.
That, to me, is huge, becausewe have a lot of erroneous job
(02:43):
profiles out there or jobdescriptions that are just for
compliance but don't really talkabout the actual work that
you're being hired to do, andthat's a real big gap in my mind
in the workplace experience.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, I love this because it really does challenge
some of the default assumptionsabout corporate life.
We historically have treatedemployees as inputs instead of
people with their own goals andneeds, and so if we're not even
assuming that people have theirown needs, their own wants
coming to it, and if you aren'teven clear about the product
(03:16):
you're creating, it's alwaysgoing to be a mismatch.
Getting really clear on what isthe product, or the experience
we have here, can only be betterfor both parties, especially
now when most organizationsreally need to be thinking about
what does work look like,especially with AI and AI agents
.
This is the time where everyonegets a clean slate.
(03:37):
We're all redoing this together.
Think about your jobs asproducts.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, dart's been able to create something that
measures this in real time andit's really powerful With that.
Here's Dart.
Dart, it's so nice to see you.
(04:03):
How have you been?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
dart, it's so nice to see you.
How have you been it?
I've been super busy goingaround the world talking, and
I'm very happy to be sittingback in my own office drinking
my own coffee and talking to youvery nice thanks for being with
us on your return, and nothinglike being in your own bed,
right like just unbelievablespace.
Yeah, much betterarts.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
You've said that we need to stop designing jobs like
tasks and start designing themlike products, and I'm wondering
what's the origin story for youwith this work?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, the origin is I spent 10 years after college in
the literary arts and so I wasan artist, and then our twins
were born.
I started working forcorporations and I always felt a
little bit like I had to holdthem in tongs a little bit away
from me, so I always stayed alittle bit distant and tried not
to be absorbed by them tooentirely.
(04:58):
When I started working in HRorganizations and I thought that
the main job of human resourceswas to get the talent necessary
for the company to achieve itsstrategy, and to simplify that
problem, we framed it as apipeline problem.
Essentially, we turn HR into aprocurement and maintenance
(05:20):
function of an input and we usewords like assets and human
capital and resources.
And all of the early managementthinkers did exactly the same
thing.
And it was when I was workingas the head of business
architecture for Cisco Systemsthat, first of all, I was seeing
that things weren't workingvery well.
I was doing this work inbusiness architecture, and in
(05:42):
business architecture you buildthese giant models that describe
how the company works, andemployees kept showing up in two
places.
And they did show up internallylike an input, but they showed
up externally as a customer.
I don't want to geek out on ittoo much, but it explained why
(06:03):
employees were showing up as acustomer, that we've framed
employees as inputs toproduction.
But inputs to production it'sbasically it's a category error,
and that's a really big problem.
Category errors are errors wemake that are so fundamental in
our reasoning that all ourreasoning that follows will be
(06:24):
flawed.
And here's the category error.
Inputs to production areinanimate and they have no
experience.
Employees are alive, they havesubjective, first-person
experiences and they are free tostop working for us at any time
(06:45):
.
They are free to stopexchanging value by not taking
the job, by leaving the job orjust not paying attention to the
job, and that's so differentfrom an input to production.
What is it?
It's a customer, and thatopened up all of the research
that I've done since then, whichis really digging deeply into
(07:09):
what it is that people want fromwork, so that we can design it
better.
We're good at product.
Look around.
Just if you look around, you'llsee that we've made a million
products.
We know how to do it.
So that's when it happened.
It happened over a decade.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
One of the things I'm wondering about is that they're
a customer and they're buyingwork.
Not to be totally esoteric, butwhat is the work they're buying
?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Expand on that, because that could mean a couple
of different things.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Do you find that everybody has the same
definition of work?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I find that nobody has the same definition of work.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So this is what's interesting, because when I
think about a customer or evenlike a product journey, when
we're like doing productdevelopment and you're thinking
about a consumer lifecycle,taking them from awareness all
the way through loyal, comingback into the cycle, all this
could just like you're talkingabout it feels like what they're
buying is stable, right.
(08:13):
In a way, it's like they'rebuying the Sephora summer
Fridays lip gloss or somethingof this sort.
How do you design for that wheneverybody has a different
definition of what?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
they're buying.
The question I asked thatopened up a lot of doors, and
then let me say how peopleanswered it and then what some
of the patterns that emergedwere.
If that's okay, yeah, please.
So the question I have askedmany hundreds, probably almost a
thousand people is what job doyou hire your job to do for you?
And people say what?
(08:45):
And so I say, yeah, your jobhires you to do something for it
.
What do you hire it to do foryou?
And this is a product marketingquestion that was developed by
Clayton Christensen and BobMesta at Harvard, and what it
does is, instead of askingpeople like, how do you want me
to design this cup, ask themwhat they want to do with the
(09:05):
cup, and you'll be able to findinnovative solutions for what
they really want.
And a lot of the ways peopleanswer is very unexpected, which
is I hire my job to pay thebills.
I hire the job to take care ofmy family.
I hire my job to learn.
But they get more and more.
(09:25):
There's 35, 40 different thingsthat people answer when they
answer this question.
I hire my job to give meinteresting puzzles to solve or
to give me a worthy opponent.
I hire my job to pay my debtsto my family, who got me here to
show them that I have achievedwhat they worked hard for me to
(09:45):
achieve.
And the thing is that thesemight sound close to each other,
but from a designer'sperspective, they're actually
distinct.
I hire my job to invent.
Some are simple I hire my jobso that I can live where I want
to live.
Sometimes they're sponsoring myvisa, or sometimes it's just I
go, I want to live near thebeach.
I could go on and on with these, but what's important about
(10:08):
them?
I'll just tell one more story,which I tell all the time,
because it's one of thesurprising ones.
One person I interviewed and, bythe way, I've never interviewed
somebody where they gave me ananswer and I never heard that
answer again.
I always hear it again thisperson was the first person to
say I hire my job to pretend.
And I said what do you mean?
(10:29):
I hire your job to pretend?
He says yeah, I like to go towork and I like to pretend to be
a vice president.
And I pointed out to him thathe is in fact a vice president.
He's been a vice president forFortune 50s and he says no, I'm
a jazz musician for Fortune 50s,and he says, no, I'm a jazz
musician.
He says I spent my 20s and 30son the stage and I learned to
(10:49):
love an adoring audience and soI like to put on my vice
president costume and I like toget up with a microphone and the
lights and I like to be adored,to be adored.
(11:11):
So there's a lot of differentanswers, and not only are there
35, 40 different things thatpeople want from work, they want
them in combination.
On average, most people wanteight, some people want as many
as 20 of these things, which maybe impossible.
Many of them are mutuallyexclusive.
And the second question Istarted asking more recently is
(11:32):
what does your job cost you?
Because when you buy a product,you want it to get the job done
and you want to buy it at areasonable cost, and there is as
much diversity almost in termsof what work costs us as what
the value is that we get out ofit.
(11:53):
Okay, that's a problem.
If you're a product designer,how do you design a product
that's different for everysingle person?
To some extent, it's a scaleproblem.
Like, how could I possiblyscale to that?
And I'm going to say, first ofall, we have the means to scale
in managers, so the means toscale is already in place.
There are businesses out therethat do this Doctors Doctors
(12:16):
deal with a hundred differentkinds of things that people need
help with, and they do adiagnosis and they customize it
for each individual person, andso it's not impossible to do
this.
There are businesses that dothis.
Physical therapists do this,sports massage people do this,
but changing the role ofmanagers it is, and also, to
(12:41):
some extent, employees.
It's very possible for managersand employees to co-design work
.
That is way better, and what ittakes is it takes mindfulness.
The manager changes their rolefrom being a top-down controller
of an asset, so the org chartshows them above with boxes down
(13:24):
below, and instead we're goingto flip the org chart.
They're going to be in asupport role, and they have two
big roles.
One is being a broker betweentwo markets now, so they're
orchestrating the value thatflows from their employees, from
the team, to the traditionalcustomer, but also the value of
the work that flows from thetraditional customer to their
team, and so they becomeconscious of two flows of value
and are working to optimize bothof them, and they become
designers, which is that theynow need to be able to do need
finding with their teams,understand their differences and
teams and managers togetherwork to build better work.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I love this idea of kind of product design because
when I'm hearing two things andit's interesting we talked to
Bob and Michael about their bookJob Moves and the work that
they're doing, especially aroundinterviewing your go-to
organization and really figuringout what you want, and then is
it a fit, and what I'm hearingyou talk about is you're a
(14:07):
product designer, you're productdesigning your career by
getting very in touch with whatdo you want personally, your
eight things around work.
But I'm also hearing thatmanagers are now product
designers for their people andbeing that broker between the
work that needs to be done andthe ecosystem that they need to
(14:31):
do it in.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
That's correct I know we want to, oh, go ahead.
And I was going to say and Ilove what they're talking about.
In my experience, you cannotdiscern from interviewing a
company whether they're going togive you what you want, because
it's much more fine-grainedthan that.
And so what you want is acompany that consciously
(14:52):
allocates work based upon yourinterests and who will work with
you over time as your interestsevolve.
So it's one of the things aboutjobs to be done.
Theory is that many of thethings that people want are not
even an attribute of them.
It's an attribute of theirsituation, and so when I had
little kids, I needed one kindof work and I had one risk
profile, and when they were incollege, I had a different risk
(15:14):
profile.
And now that they'reself-supporting, I have a
different risk profile and Ihave different things that I can
actually open up my work to dofor me.
I think it's incredibly hard totell before you go to a company
whether or not they're going tobe able to really give you what
you want.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Oh, to your very good point on the premise that this
is a living, breathing organismnot only in and of ourselves,
but also in the relationship andthe work that needs to be done.
The name of the game is it'sever evolving.
It's not static, so you can't.
I know.
We want to talk about theemployee as a customer a little
bit more in depth.
I'm very curious, though, and Iwant to make sure we get to
(15:49):
this is we're designed right nowfor very static.
Hr is driving all of this world, so what happens to HR?
What happens to HR?
What happens to HR?
Do?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
we blow up?
Do we blow up?
It's a bi-directional.
The thing about a two-sidedbusiness is it has two flows of
value, and one flow of value isstill an input to production
flow of value, which is that youneed to find the talent, the
people who can get the job done.
So recruiting is still reallyimportant, but now recruiting
(16:23):
changes.
So what's going to happen isthat there's a lot of
traditional things that we do aspractices and services in HR
that will still be there becausethey with the skills that we
want you to have.
(16:46):
That's actually not how you sellproducts.
If Amazon came to you and saidI'm going to just advertise the
currency that we take and howyou can pay for this thing that
we're going to give you, that'snot how products are sold.
Products are sold by tellingyou, describing the product,
showing you specifications, andthose specifications are going
(17:07):
to think this is the kind ofpuzzles we're solving here.
This is the kinds of messeswe're tidying.
We're going to give you a stageor we're not going to give you
a stage.
It's describing the actualproduct that is available to you
if you come and work for us andI did this, in fact, I've done
this multiple times and some ofthe managers that I've taught
have done this.
I had somebody.
I needed a Six Sigma black belt, a master black belt, and I
(17:30):
found one who was just fantastic.
And I interviewed him and Iasked him what do you want to
get out of this job?
And he says I want to build thebest process design learning
education system in the world.
And I said you know what?
Right now I'm not sure I havethe budget to actually set up a
learning organization aroundprocess design.
(17:53):
And so I said right now I don'thave a product I can sell you
that I think is going to satisfyyour needs.
I said, as soon as I do, I willcome back to you because he was
perfect, he was everything andI wanted, so I didn't hire him
just because of what he could dofor me.
I held off and three monthslater, when I knew I had the
budget, I called him back.
He joined my team and hedesigned the best process design
(18:17):
curriculum in the world for mycompany.
And so the whole that's like anexample no-transcript.
(18:44):
I'm going to give you a jobrole and I'm going to have you
be in that box and I'm going totell you what skills you need to
have, at what level, to performin that job role, and everybody
in your job role.
I'm going to tell the samething and I'm going to measure
everybody against the skills andcapabilities in that job role
(19:07):
and essentially, what I've justdone is I've told everybody I
want you all to be the same, Iwant you to aspire to be
identical to each other and ifyou do things that are above and
beyond your job description, Ican't really see that it's hard
for me to reward that.
But the more you become thismodel that I have in my head of
(19:29):
what that role is like everybodyelse.
Thinking.
Thinking.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
For the kind of naysayers out there I will say,
or just for someone that'sincredibly numbers driven how do
I make money?
How do I make sure people arebringing in if it's like a
salesperson that they'rebringing in 200 million dollars
in sales because they have toand be their best self?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
sales people are a good one to pick because they're
right there where the dollarsare, yeah, and so that's the
definition of performance forthem is that they're winning
those dollars.
Let's pick somebody deeper inthe organization.
The truth is so.
First of all, one thing beforeI go on multi-sided businesses
are totally common, and it'stotally common for one of the
(20:25):
customers in a multi-sidedbusiness to not be revenue
generating.
Let's take ad-based media.
There's the advertiser, butthen there's the reader, and the
reader's acquired at a loss.
And how do you measure yourreadership?
You measure them in part, byand by the way.
That's nice, because they'resubscribers and employees are
(20:45):
subscribers to the job work.
So what you're looking at isyou're looking at customer
measures and product measures.
Are we successfully sellingthis product into the
marketplace?
What does it mean to sell thisproduct into the marketplace?
What it means is people arepaying us for it, but employees
don't pay with money.
Employees pay with attentionand labor and wisdom and
(21:07):
creativity.
And in fact, just lately I'vebeen on a rant about
discretionary effort.
Discretionary effort is I wantyou to work a longer day.
What we're talking about hereis if you are finding the work
really rewarding, you're goingto bring more of yourself to the
work and that's the kind ofcontribution that you want from
this particular customer.
(21:28):
So you have customer measuresand product measures, just like
you would anyplace else.
It's just they're going to be.
You're going to have to livewith the fact that some of them
are not going to be denominatedin dollars, other measures of
performance, and the thing isthat this whole thing about
profit profit is a laggingindicator of a healthy company,
(21:50):
especially a healthy multi-sidedmarket, which is that you can
actually squeeze money out of acompany in the short term, but
if you're not feeding the peoplewho work there and if you're
not creating customer loyalty inyour traditional customer, it's
just a matter of time beforeyou falter.
And so a lot of this is notabout the quarterly revenue.
(22:13):
It's about one or two yearsrevenue.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Actually, the boss-employee relationship is
actually a really good use casethere, as you're speaking.
When I think of a performanceindicator for a leader, that
comes down to retention, how isyour team growing?
There are very different thingsthat you would measure in this
case.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
And one of the things that the teams that I teach
measure is how rewarding is thework this month and if some
category of work for a teammember goes into the red or the
yellow, what's the time toresolution of that?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
What are some of the mindset shifts that have to
happen within organizations toget them to start thinking of
employees like a customer?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So where did this come from in the first place?
The idea that employees areinputs.
Where it comes from is what I'mgoing to call situated
reasoning, and situatedreasoning I'm abusing the term
because situated reasoning issupposed to be the wise
reasoning that we do in contextand I have to tie a knot.
(23:20):
But it's contextual because Iknow that it's raining and
that's what it's supposed to be,but I'm using it another way,
which is situated reasoning.
We work in large companies.
All of us work in a piece ofthe large company and within
that piece of the company wehave local incentives and we
have local information.
(23:42):
It's always incomplete,no-transcript, which is I turned
(24:06):
.
It's impossible to seeeverybody as a unique human
being.
So you turn them into numbers,and that's what I did, and so
that's what leaders have askedHR to do and that's what we have
done.
So the real problem is, and thereal change is, getting away
from the situated reasoning andstanding above the problem space
(24:27):
and recognizing it, not withthis, what I consider to be a
naive perspective of how thecompany runs, but actually a
holistic perspective, which isto say it's that the exchange of
value is much broader anddeeper than a simple purchasing
transaction of employees.
(24:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
What do you say to those leaders that are still in
the old mindset of you're luckyto have a job here.
They're not willing to do this.
What message do you have forthose folks?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It's interesting because I've heard it in a
couple of different ways.
One is people who work here areso entitled.
What message do you have forthose folks?
It's interesting because I'veheard it in a couple of
different ways.
One is people who work here areso entitled.
I give them all this stuff andthey're not thankful and they
quit.
And so one of the things I saythere is you would never say
(25:23):
about a customer they're notbuying my product because
they're lazy.
You'd say about a customerthey're not buying my product
because something needs to beimproved in my product.
And, in fact, this idea which Ilove, which is you should work
for me and my objectives, evenif you hate every day.
Who's entitled in thatstatement?
No shit.
So that's one thing.
Yeah, no shit.
(25:59):
And we're not.
Yes, I do think it's a moralquestion whether or not we work
this way, but beyond that, it'sthe health of your business and
the long-term health of yourbusiness.
And in fact, I had BartHoulihan on my podcast Work for
Humans, and he's the person whofounded B-Lab, among other
things, but he also has nowfounded an exchange-traded fund
(26:24):
that invests in companies wherethe employees hit certain
measures of finding their workrewarding and those companies do
better over time.
And in fact, there's a giantstack of research that shows
that companies do better whenthe people who work there like
the work, and it's really just,it's a naive perspective to
(26:45):
think that people don't have tolike the work.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
We couldn't agree more with you on that, because
we talk about that all the time,dart.
It seems like with every studythat just continues to drive
home this same message.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
But then you then see the headlines right, even
though we know RTO, no one wantsRTO and they want flexibility.
But you have these leaders, andit's not just I don't know if
they have earplugs in.
I always think of the weddingcrashes where they're like
earmuffs.
They're just earmuffing it, notlistening.
How do you get through?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
How do you break through?
It is the frame.
Yeah, and this is myfundamental belief.
Yeah.
That until we destabilize theframe as employees as inputs and
replace that with employees ascustomers, the frame of
employees as inputs will alwaystend to underestimate employee
agency, underestimate employeecomplexity.
(27:42):
It will at every single pointtry to simplify the problem by
turning people into numbers andby trying to get everybody to be
better inputs.
And better inputs means morethe same, more uniform, and we
just buy them and then we'redone, and then we're done, and
so that whole mindset is anabsolutely blinding mindset.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
It is it makes you dumb.
It's so interesting because I,as someone who I have a strong
background in talent acquisitionright.
So I've spent manyconversations with candidates
between hiring managers andyou're in a unique role because
your good recruiters areunderstanding what the business
needs, but also what theindividual needs, because you
(28:27):
might make a bad hire if it'snot a match.
So that's your kind of job,like.
I see recruiters at the heartof helping turn this shift,
because they're already in aspace where they see talent as
customers because they'reselling them this opportunity,
but they also need to really, ifthey want talent that stays
(28:47):
right or that really aligns withthe business goals, they need
to understand what the talentneeds to thrive as well.
And so there's almost like thisunique it sounds, and you tell
me I'd be curious to hear whatyou think there's a real
opportunity where talentacquisition can start the shift.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, talent acquisition gets it more than
any other function because theyare there at the point of sale,
and so they get to beface-to-face with individuals as
opposed to seeing them far awayas numbers, and they see what
people want.
Now, they don't actuallynecessarily they have a tendency
to go forward with here's thepay, here's the job, here's the
(29:24):
title, here's all this stuff.
Not what job do you hire yourjob to do for you, and things
would be better if we did that.
But there's another piece tothis, which is there's sales,
which is recruiting.
You're selling this product oryou're selling subscriptions to
the product actually, and thenTheodore Leavitt said that
(29:44):
sales' job is to get rid ofstuff the company has, and
marketing's job is to make surethat they have stuff they can
get rid of.
Recruiters are put into aposition where they have to sell
a product that they actuallydon't know very much about the
specifications of that product,but also they don't have any
(30:05):
control over the quality of thatproduct that they're selling.
And so there needs to be a muchbetter link between the sales
team and the marketing team, andthere needs to be a marketing
team, which there really isn't.
What the rest of HR is doing isessentially treating workforce
as things, even though and letme just say something I'm HR, so
(30:28):
when I throw rocks at HR, I'mthrowing rocks at me.
But the thing I want to say isevery person in HR knows people
are people and knows people arehumans.
We have built a system thattreats people as things and we
have to function within thatsystem, and it actually causes
us moral harm, moral injury, forus to do that in any cases.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, do you think AI is going to exacerbate this?
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yes.
So let me say the two differentmindsets are going to apply AI
very differently.
The two different mindsets aregoing to apply AI very
differently.
The mindset of employees areinputs to production and I wish
they were more like things isgoing to be delighted by
replacing them with actualthings.
And I think it was who saidthat improved means to
unimproved ends doesn't get youa better outcome.
(31:21):
And in employees or customersmodel and work as a product
model, we're going to look at AIvery differently.
So one of the things I've doneis I've interviewed a lot of
people about what is yourfavorite tool of the trade.
Tools play a very interestingrole in work, which is there's
the work, there's me doing thework.
And then I had this mediatingthing, which is the tool I'm
(31:45):
using.
And so I was interviewing mybarber because nobody gets away
from my interviews and I saidwhat's your favorite tool of the
trade?
And he said it's these Hansoshears right here.
And I said why?
And he says clippers are wayfaster, they're really good at
doing hair fast, but these Hansoshears help me to express
myself better, I can be moreexpressive, I'm more in control
(32:09):
of what I'm doing with these.
And he says, and I'm willing topay a lot for them.
They're $1,800 and I have 12different pair and he says they
fit just right in my hand andthey help me to be the creator
that I want to be.
That's what AI is in a employeesor customers world, which is
(32:30):
are we giving you the tools toto amplify yourself?
Now you're bringing your wholeself to work.
Are we giving you the tools tohelp you to be more expressive,
to get the outcomes that youreally want, and do those tools
fit your hand in a way that isergonomic for you?
So it's not replacing inputswith dumb machines, it's
(33:04):
amplifying whole humans.
So do I think we're going toget this wrong?
Yes, yeah, you're seeing itevery day.
Right, we're going to get itwrong.
It's part of the reason why Ialways argue put the capability
to use ai in the hands of thepeople and they will build the
tools that they need to fittheir hand and and satisfy their
needs and that's what we'rehearing left and right.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Those conversations are not happening.
One of the things, dart, thatreally struck me in your article
(33:44):
from a almost a year ago nowright, was that bubble chart,
because you showed somethingthat was very tangible, right in
the hands of a leader to beable to support some like their
team, being a customer, like inreal time, and you can make
real-time changes.
Can you share more about withour listeners about that bubble
chart and how this is possible,so they can get a picture of how
(34:06):
you can operationalizesomething like this?
Speaker 1 (34:08):
The bubble chart first asks where's your
attention going team?
So what are all the categoriesof work that are in your
portfolio?
And most organizations haveapproximately 20 different
categories of work that they do.
The size of the bubble on thebubble chart is an indication of
how much of our attention isgoing to track your hours.
(34:34):
We're trying to track yourattention.
If it's keeping you awake atnight, that counts.
If you're tucking your kidsinto bed and you're thinking
about it, that counts.
So it's attention.
That's.
The size of the bubble is howaligned is that category of work
(34:59):
to the purpose of the company?
How much is it contributing tothe purpose of the company?
The vertical axis is how muchis this contributing to the
purpose of the team?
So what we're really looking atthere is that your team can do
a lot of different kinds of workand some of it you're uniquely
qualified to do.
That's the highest margin workthat you can do, and if you
start being asked to do workthat you're too expensive to do
(35:21):
or you're not as good at asother teams, it's lower margin
work for you and you shouldreally consider whether or not
you should be doing that work.
The color of the bubble is howrewarding is the work,
particularly to the person whois finding it the least
rewarding?
And on a monthly basis, theteam gets together and looks at
this Are we doing stuff that'saligned to the purpose of the
(35:43):
company?
Are we paying our attention tothat?
Are we paying attention tostuff that is really our unique
value, and is any of it notrewarding for us?
And the whole team workstogether to resolve a category
of work that goes into theyellow or red and it's perfect.
I actually have a really goodstory I'm super excited about
(36:05):
Like sometimes it's super simplewhich is something goes a
bubble, goes into the yellow andwe say what's going on.
And the person says you know,I'm working in a time zone on
this project that takes methrough breakfast with my kids,
and he said I'm the person whomakes breakfast and so that's a
hardship in my family.
That work is costing me.
I like the project, but it'scosting me more than I want to
(36:26):
pay.
And so somebody on the team whohappens to be in Singapore says
, oh, I can take that work, it'sa lot closer to my time zone.
I'm really interested in thatproject.
They swap projects and it goesgreen.
It's a perfect example of ateam acting real time based upon
local information and havingthe freedom to do that.
But here's a deeper story, andI just got the rest of the story
(36:48):
this last week Somebody on myteam, their bubble went red and
that's serious.
Red is bad.
We call that walking on glass,and that's serious.
Red is bad.
We call that walking on glass.
And she said Mike, the clientis bullying me, common, yes, and
(37:19):
so I.
This is a case where the teamcan't solve that.
I'm the only person who cansolve that.
So what I did is I went and Ispoke to the person who was
doing the bullying and I saidlet's work out a way that you
can communicate differently.
And I attended meetings for alittle while to make sure that
it got better.
So that bubble went green.
So I was at a conference inStockholm last week.
And who walks up to me?
The bully?
And she said and honestly itbrings tears to my eyes, I swear
to God.
She said look, you talked to meabout one of your employees a
(37:44):
number of years ago this waseight years ago and she said I
want you to know I was having areally hard time.
I was new to the company and Iwas having serious mental issues
right then, which I get becauseI was too.
I was new to the company tooand I was too, and she said you
(38:05):
were the only person who waskind to me at that company at
that time and you really helpedme to find a way forward by
being mindful about what wasgoing on and intervening.
Everybody got better.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
And you had the real-time data to help you do
that.
To facilitate.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
It's just by paying attention.
You didn't know that politicsare a cost to some people.
And somebody's bubble goes redbecause, oh, this is a really
political product project andthat's.
I hate that.
Okay, let's put that on thelist of things that are a cost
for you and let's see what wecan do to resolve it.
And it's not always just moveoff of the project.
Sometimes it's why do politicstrigger you?
(38:51):
Could you potentially find away to grow and learn to move in
a political space?
And those are complicatedconversations and most of the
time you don't want to say thebubble went red and it's because
of you.
You want to say let's figureout how to fix it.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, the beauty is that it facilitates either a
coaching conversation, itfacilitates team camaraderie, it
facilitates the relationshipbetween the boss and employee
and having healthy conversationsand discussions for development
and growth.
There's so much, and thenultimately, that trickles out
throughout the organization,right?
Because if everyone's boughtinto this and they're supporting
(39:32):
each other, you're really justcontinually, in this design
space, helping work to be betterfor everybody, which leads to
better business outcomesultimately.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
And what's beautiful about the bubble chart to me is
that it is an absolutemanifestation of the multi-sided
business, of a multi-sidedmanagement system.
You are asking are we doing thehighest margin work that we can
do?
And you are also asking are weadequately serving the needs of
(40:01):
the employee, customer?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Listen, we're going to jump right in.
How do you feel about doing aquick, rapid round of questions?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Let's do it Okay, let's go.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
It's 2030, dart, what's work going to look like?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Can I pick 2035?
Because I do think it's goingto take a little longer In 2035,
in many ways things won't havechanged at all, but a large
proportion of companies willstart recognizing employees as
customers, and that's what thepath that I'm on, and I think
it'll take a little while andall sorts of things change when
you do that, and maybe we'lltalk about some of those today.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Sounds good, and employee as a customer is on one
of my first questions for you,so we will.
What's one thing aboutcorporate culture you'd like to
see just die already?
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Framing employees as inputs to production.
Not only do I think it'ssomething that's not effective,
I've come to believe that it'simmoral to treat people as
things.
That's, in fact, my whole motto, which is ending work that
treats people like things.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I love it.
Yeah, there's a lot ofdehumanizing language that's
used to refer to people withinorganizations, it seems at times
.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Yes, it's absolutely the dominant metaphor.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
What's the greatest opportunities that most
organizations are missing out onright now?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Allocating work to people in such a way that it
matches their passions.
We're a lot like a shoe store,where you go in and we just hand
people a box of shoes and theydon't try them on, they don't
look for fashion and they don'teven know what size they are,
and so they walk away with shoesthey don't fit.
(42:05):
They don't like them.
It's practically free to pay alittle bit of attention to how
you, to what people want, andthen allocate work with
mindfulness to that, and andit's just this dumb thing that
we don't do.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah, I remember, does anyone?
And Francesca, because youworked at Nike.
But remember when Nike firstcame out with that you could
custom design your sneakercolors, features, even down to
the laces right, like Dart in anideal world.
Do you see that being like ajob thing?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yes, at least let's get shoes that fit.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, that's a good.
Let's start there.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
We'll start with fitting.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, that's a good place.
All right, we're going to get alittle more personal here.
Hopefully you don't mind.
What music are you listening to?
What's on repeat on yourplaylist right now?
Speaker 1 (42:54):
I get obsessed with particular bands and right now I
am obsessed with a Korean folkpop band called Lee Nalchi
L-E-E-N-A-L-C-H-I.
Okay, start with their songTiger is Coming it will blow
(43:15):
your mind.
I don't promise you'll like it.
Is coming, it will blow yourmind, I don't promise you'll
like it.
I've hardly shown it Like I'mso into it and I show it to
people and almost nobody likesit, but I just love it.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
That's what matters, right it's opera, korean folk
opera.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Okay, with a bass line.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Ooh, interesting.
All right, I know what I'mdoing this afternoon.
I gotta go check that out.
Now I'm going to go for my why.
What are you reading?
It could be old-fashioned book,Kindle or audiobook.
What's on your list?
Speaker 1 (43:48):
So I was a literature major and I read an awful lot
of very trashy science fiction.
But there is a kind of sciencefiction that I think is that I'm
loving, and so it's called it'sHope Punk.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
I'll check it out.
I actually find myself staringaway from science fiction
because of the experience fromthe 80s and 90s, where it's just
so depressing to me.
So I will check it out becauseI think like knowing that
there's hope behind it soundslike a good change.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, Check it out because I think, knowing that
there's hope behind it soundslike a good change.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Yeah, it's really lovely.
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Who do you really admire?
I happen to be doing somestudies right now of large
systems change, and so, becauseof that, the person who pops to
mind right now for me is LouisPasteur.
More than anybody I can thinkof, he overturned a dominant
paradigm and saved billions oflives, and he did it by just
(44:50):
doggedly doing the work, and sothat's what comes to mind right
now.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
What's one piece of advice that you've received that
you'd like to share with others?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
One of my favorites, especially for people who work
in corporations, was, when, indoubt, take the high road.
I remember I went to my managerand I said look, I've got these
two options I can go this way,or I can go this way, and this
way is a little bad.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
And he said, when in doubt, take the high road.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
And ever since I have done that.
Smart advice, it's nice, it'ssimple to apply If you've got
two options ahead of you and oneseems low road just take the
high road, Michelle Obama.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
when they go low, we go high.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Okay, maybe she had the same manager.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Dart, thanks so much for joining us today.
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
11foldcom Work for Humans is where this
conversation is going on and sothere's 150 episodes there.
All right, we'll post all thoselinks so you can like and
subscribe to all of DART'splaces and for the article DART.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Well, we're going to include that too.
Oh good, people should read it.
It's so good.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
It is good.
Yeah, we went deeper into ittoday than we were able in the
article.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
This episode was produced, edited and all things
by us myself, mel Plett andFrancesca Rennery.
Our music is by Pink Zebra andif you loved this conversation
and you want to contribute yourthoughts with us, please do.
You can visit us atyourworkfriendscom, but you can
(46:35):
also join us over on LinkedIn.
We have a LinkedIn communitypage and we have the TikToks and
Instagrams.
So please join us in thesocials and if you like this and
you've benefited from thisepisode and you think someone
else can benefit from thisepisode, please rate and
subscribe.
We'd really appreciate it.
That helps keep us going.
(46:55):
Take care, friends.
Bye friends.
Bye friends.
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