What Works

No matter how fastidious you are about creating and executing a plan, working toward any big goal will require adjustments. No matter how diligent you are about documentation and maintenance, any process will break down over time. The work we do is always changing—whether because of the people we work with, the market we operate in, or the cultural context our work is received in. Even when it seems like smooth sailing is just one standard operating procedure away, things will shift.

That can feel like failure, or at least like you're not doing quite as well as you should be. But really, it's an opportunity. You can embrace the confusion, the entropy, the breakdown... and learn.

Today, I've unlocked and revised an episode I put out in February 2024 for premium subscribers. If you like it, you'll love Summer Seminar, a 7-week program that combines speculative fiction with curiosity about our own lives and work. This year, we're reading Sofia Samatar's The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain and venturing through 6 explorations of systems thinking. Learn more and register with choose-your-own pricing.

Footnotes:
  • (00:00) - Process Entropy & Evolution
  • (19:26) - Credits
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What is What Works?

Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.