Disengaged

James A. Seechurn
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Management

Disengaged asks why most people feel detached from the work they do, and what it would take to change that. Organizations meet almost every problem with more control: more process, more measurement, more incentives. That response deepens the problem it was meant to solve, since control is what suppresses engagement in the first place. Each episode brings together writers, researchers, and practitioners in conversations about motivation, autonomy, pay, job design, and performance management, and about what it takes to build a workplace on a foundation of trust rather than control.

  1. 6d ago

    Everything is Personal With Louis Roden

    “When they say let’s take the emotion out of the decision, that’s even an emotional decision.” Louis Roden is the founder of Inspire Consulting Group, an international leadership development consultancy, and has spent more than two decades in organizational development and service culture across hospitality, logistics, and finance. His book Everything Is Personal: Embracing Stewardship in the Workplace and Everyplace argues that leaders who hide behind “it’s just business” erode the trust their people need. We cover the phrase “it’s business, not personal,” stewardship, why work feels neutral for so many people, how leaders build trust day to day, and why the golden rule gets it wrong. What we covered: The COVID lockdown and the nudge from his wife that got the book finishedMark Twain’s “Be good and you will be lonesome” and Following the Equator as the first travel blogWhy nobody says they loved a job because they were well managedWork as a gray, neutral 80 percent of waking lifeWhy Louis can’t stand the phrase work-life balanceStewardship of the people who hand a leader a big piece of their livesLayoffs, hard feedback, and the trite cover of “it’s not personal”Why no one can take the emotion out of a decisionFrederick Taylor, scientific management, and work as a negative goodRational and irrational anger, and empathy for joy as well as sadnessTrust built in small moments and eroded by paper cutsThe bartender whose smile disappears when the bar gets busyThirty authentic seconds over a scheduled one-hour one-on-oneThe weekly check-in as a box to tickFlipping the golden rule: treat people the way they want to be treatedThe Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya’s sword, and anyone selling a magic bulletPeople: Mark Twain, authorDaniel Goleman, psychologist and authorSimon Sinek, authorFrederick Taylor, father of scientific managementDart Lindsley, previous guest on this showRené Descartes, philosopherAntonio Damasio, neuroscientistErnest Hemingway, authorJohn Steinbeck, authorBooks: Everything Is Personal, Louis RodenFollowing the Equator, Mark TwainEmotional Intelligence, Daniel GolemanDescartes’ Error, Antonio DamasioOf Mice and Men, John SteinbeckThe Grapes of Wrath, John SteinbeckOrganizations: Inspire Consulting Group, Gallup, StarbucksFind Louis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisroden/ Website: https://inspirelsc.com Book: https://everythingispersonal.org Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

  2. Oct 15

    Right Kind of Wrong with Amy Edmondson

    “In a novel context, a context like science or R&D or innovation or entrepreneurship, mediocrity would be no failures.” Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Her research made psychological safety a core idea in modern management, and she is the author of Teaming, The Fearless Organization and Right Kind of Wrong, which won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year in 2023. We cover the failed hypothesis that launched her career, why bad is stronger than good, the three types of failure, Toyota’s Andon cord, near misses, whether failure is a privilege, and what leaders can do to build psychological safety. What we covered: The 1990s hospital study where the better teams seemed to make more medication errorsThe realization that those teams were reporting more of their errorsAwfulizing, then a looking-out-the-window moment in a 15th-floor PhD officeInterpersonal risk and why psychological safety matters most in knowledge workWhy we notice negatives faster than positivesGoing from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasmBasic, complex and intelligent failures, and the five criteria for an intelligent oneAstro Teller at X: if you’re not failing, you’re not taking the right risksRewarding teams for shutting down failing projectsThe fundamental attribution error, at work and at homeJames Reason’s Swiss cheese model in aviation and healthcareToyota’s Andon cord, from loom machines to a San Francisco trolley car, and why most pulls never stop the lineNear misses as good catches, and the case for a near miss dayWhy failure is a privilege, and how leaders can level the failure playing fieldWhether encouraging failure means celebrating mediocrityThree moves to build psychological safety: frame the work, ask questions, respond productivelyPeople: Arie Kruglanski, psychologist and previous guest on this showRoy Baumeister, social psychologistTeresa Amabile, Harvard Business School professorAstro Teller, head of X, Alphabet’s moonshot factoryJames Reason, British error psychologistBooks: Right Kind of Wrong, Amy EdmondsonThe Fearless Organization, Amy EdmondsonTeaming, Amy EdmondsonThe Progress Principle, Teresa Amabile and Steven KramerThe Hidden Brain, Shankar VedantamArticles: Bad Is Stronger Than Good, Roy Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer and Kathleen Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001 https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Econometrica, 1979 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1914185Organizations: Harvard Business School, X, Google, Toyota, MicrosoftFind Amy: Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6451 Website: https://amycedmondson.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

  3. Oct 8

    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 moderatorThe scale-ups where every team wrote its own operating manualPoor relationships at work as the root of Jessie's most disengaged yearsBeautiful mission statements at companies that are still hard to work forRicardo Semler's diseconomies of human scale, and Dunbar's numberZapier welcoming candidates who pull out of its hiring processNew hires who were sold a story and ask, "What did I sign up to?"Calibration meetings and the five-out-of-five ratingAI performance ratings as scientific management 2.0Tiny teams, the pizza rule, and splitting teams before they grow too bigWhy individual pay for performance discourages admitting mistakesThe director of comp Jessie told not to joinWhy HR is burnt out, and the growth playbooks she wants to throw outRenaming HR as organizational successMaslow, duty of care, and whether we will look back on disengagement as unfairStakkd, its HR tech database, and Stakkd 2.0People: Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN and previous guest on this showRicardo Semler, former CEO of SemcoRobin Dunbar, evolutionary psychologistW. Edwards Deming, management scholarJack Welch, former CEO of General ElectricAmy Edmondson, Harvard Business School professorAbraham Maslow, psychologistBooks: Close the Gap, James Alexander SeechurnArticles: 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_stakkdOrganizations: Stakkd, Semco, Zapier, General Electric, Haier, Mondragon, Handelsbanken, FNDNFind Jessie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessieschofer/ Stakkd: https://stakkd.tech Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

  4. Oct 1

    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 meetingsClients love their consultants, not the firms those consultants work forTwo internal meetings every two weeks, and what the rest of the week is forNua consultants asking the partners whether they could please track their hoursThe nickel and diming that comes with the hourly modelEveryone at Nua gets the same bonus, whatever their individual performanceThe bonus that moves from 20 percent to 21 and pleases nobodyFour job levels on paper, two in practice: partner and consultantMajors and minors in place of practice areasGerry's rules of management, starting with do nothing, ending with two blank rulesManagers who never wanted the job and took it for the payMercer's manager charter, and Jensen Huang's thirty direct reportsElecting your own manager, and where Gerry pushes back on the ideaThe client whose job architecture, bonuses and equity created an incredible amount of workWhether AI makes experience and education requirements irrelevantStock options, RSUs, dilution and growthThe Ryland Report, and why the team asked for more financial detail, not lessScaling to ten thousand people, and the naming of Uber NuaPeople: Joe Farris, co-founder of Nua GroupPaul Reiman, compensation consultant and previous guest on this showDan Walter, equity compensation specialist and the first guest on this showJack Stack, who led one of the most leveraged employee buyouts in US historyJensen Huang, CEO of NvidiaBooks: Close the Gap, James Alexander SeechurnArticles: 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-performanceOrganizations: Nua Group, Mercer, Watson Wyatt, Radford, Irish Pensions Trust, Morning Star, Nucor, Handelsbanken, Buurtzorg, Nvidia, Gallup, MSCI, StripeFind Gerry: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerrymurphynuagroup/ Website: https://www.nuahr.com Email: gerry.murphy@nuahr.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

  5. Sep 24

    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 publicistThe 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 percentWhy candidates who refuse to apply without a range move employers faster than legislationThe $100 toaster on sale for $50 the next dayThe fintech firm that turned down a star analyst asking for a $1 million salaryThe 75th percentile, and why a percentile is not a philosophyJob architecture as the office refrigerator and its 180 ketchup packetsThe manager who automates three roles and loses every direct reportThe loyalty tax, and why stayers earn less than leaversMerit budget benchmarking, and why to budget 9 percent next yearSame-store pay growth, borrowed from StarbucksLori the recruiter, her Coffee is for Closers mug, and fixing the front doorSelf-set pay at Semco and Smarkets, and crunchy or creamy peanut butterThe printing company that replaced commissions with salary and profit shareThe hand-drawn overhead transparency behind the 50/50 pay mix slide People: Alfie Kohn, author and previous guest on this showDan Ariely, behavioral economist and previous guest on this showAndrea LaRowe, 37signals, previous guest on this showStefan Gaertner, Syndio, previous guest on this showDaniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, psychologistsTeresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, researchersBoris Groysberg, Harvard Business School professorLouis Kelso, economistPhilip Slater, sociologistJerry Colletti, sales compensation consultantBryan Briscoe, Paul's longtime co-presenter Books: Pay Differently, Paul ReimanChasing Stars, Boris GroysbergThe 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.

  6. Sep 17

    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 riseThe brain as a vintage Swiss army knife, adequate at many tasks, built for a world we have leftCar engineers who design against human error, social media engineers who design for itPrepaid debit against credit, weekly loads against monthly, Monday against FridayThe India experiments, where a month of pay riding on a puzzle made people worse at solving itThe brain surgeon offered $100,000 and threatened with a hitman in parking spot 33Which survey questions predict alpha, and which predict nothingPerceived fairness outranking salary level, and the argument Dan could not win on Wall StreetThe company that spent a day celebrating failed projects and paid half a million dollars to the winnerBureaucracy as an engine whose definition of success is nothing happeningThe hospital janitor we want to stop doing their job, and what job descriptions cost usTheory X, Theory Y, and the ancient craftsmen who spent half their time on beautyTwo years spent interviewing the people who wanted him tried, imprisoned, or hangedWriting 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 showSimon Jones, narrator of Dan's audiobooksEd Lazear, economist behind the Safelite windshield studySam Glucksberg, psychologist of the candle problem experimentsDouglas McGregor, originator of Theory X and Theory Y Books: Predictably Irrational, Dan ArielyMisbelief, Dan ArielyThe 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.

  7. Sep 10

    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 laterThe three percent merit budget, and what the annual salary survey roundups tell usRewarding a standout year with money, or using it to raise the standard across a teamWhy Matt left the job he enjoyed most in his career to build a compensation practiceHow his client window moved from 50 employees to 100 or 150, and what breaks at that sizeBenchmarking as a source of cognitive closure, and the living wage argument underneath itRunn's single rate per role, and the salary trajectory that made their people harder to poachCarta, 37signals, Buffer, and PayPal as models that remove the negotiationFairness as a relative judgment, and how quickly a good salary becomes an unfair oneWhy US companies resist narrow bands, and what wide bands say about trust in hiringThe bad hire label, the myth of the A player, and where responsibility for performance sitsThe player coach, the stretched leader, and ClickUp's million-dollar salary bandsWhat Matt tells anyone thinking about leaving a salaried role to consultPeople 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.

  8. Sep 3

    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 voiceHow the Close the Gap cover came aboutGood briefs, bad briefs, and Hellmann's sneakers made from food wastePresenting irrational ideas to rational peopleMad Men is dead: culture now informs marketingProtecting the potential of the ideaPixar's brain trust and the Overton windowCulture fit as hiring people who look and sound like youWhy the modern company still runs on a hierarchy inherited from the church and the factoryThe KitKat catapultFocus groups, market data, and the sea of samenessThe manager as emulsifierTrust, control, purpose, and tensionWhy asking people to keep doing what they do well kills the sparkFreelance versus full timeLeaving Dylan alone: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in one exampleProactive work, gold wall sessions, and 3M's fifteen percent timeExecutive pay, the C-suite, and the role of profitPeople: 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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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Disengaged asks why most people feel detached from the work they do, and what it would take to change that. Organizations meet almost every problem with more control: more process, more measurement, more incentives. That response deepens the problem it was meant to solve, since control is what suppresses engagement in the first place. Each episode brings together writers, researchers, and practitioners in conversations about motivation, autonomy, pay, job design, and performance management, and about what it takes to build a workplace on a foundation of trust rather than control.

Information

  • Creator
    James A. Seechurn
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 James A. Seechurn
  • Show Website
    Disengaged

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