36. What AI Is Teaching Us About Ourselves
Episode description
Get the AI Coffee Club toolkit to start one at your own organization: Download here!
AI isn’t coming—it’s here. Every organization is already feeling its impact, whether through new tools, shifting expectations, or the quiet panic of not knowing where to start. But most companies are doing what they always do: treating transformation like a plan instead of an experiment. And as AI reshapes how work gets done, the biggest risk isn’t falling behind—it’s automating the dysfunctions you already have.
In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin take their first deep dive into AI since 2023. They unpack why AI acts as a mirror for your organization’s operating system, how hesitation and hype are both clouding judgment, and what it looks like to design meaningful ways to learn and experiment instead of performative roadmaps.
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Mentioned references:
- Little Caesar's and Detroit Redwings connection
- The Ready's AI Coffee Club
- Dot-com bubble
- polarities in tension
- "traditional consulting episode": AWWTR Ep. 8
- conference Rodney refers to: Charter Workplace Summit
- "AI as translation layer podcast" (actually an article)
00:00 Intro + Check-In: What’s good?
03:13 The Pattern: AI is a mirror for everything in your org, and probably making it worse
09:48 Importance of doing your own research, even if you’re a skeptic
12:35 Treating AI as a paint job on your broken org won’t fix anything
16:30 The role of humans at work right now
21:03 Importance of real scaffolding to do this work
24:14 Recasting IT as the enabler rather than the traffic cop
28:03 Nobody is an expert yet and there is no roadmap
33:43 The easiest idea with AI usually isn’t the best one
39:28 What Rodney and Sam are hopeful about with AI
44:23 Counter ideas for engaging with AI
47:10 Wrap up: leave us a review and share the show with your coworkers
Sound engineering and design by Taylor Marvin of Coupe Studios.