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As Discussed...

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by James A. Seechurn

5.0(1 reviews)

14 episodes

Updated Daily

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Podcast Overview

As Discussed... explores how pay, culture, and systems shape the way we work, and how we might design workplaces that actually make people want to do great work. Each episode is a candid conversation about what motivates people, how organizations try to measure performance, why pay matters (and why it often doesn’t), and the psychology that sits behind human behavior at work. Expect open discussions, research, and real-world examples from thought-leaders and practitioners who are rethinking how work really works.

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Publishing Since

2/2/2026

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Recent Episodes

July 16, 2026

The Employee Advantage with Stephan Meier

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

July 2, 2026

Purpose and Work with Jessica Zwaan

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

June 4, 2026

37signals with Andrea LaRowe

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

14 total episodes available

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What is As Discussed...?: As Discussed... explores how pay, culture, and systems shape the way we work, and how we might design workplaces that actually make people want to do great work. Each episode is a candid conversation about what motivates people, how organizations try to measure performance, why pay matters (and why it often doesn’t), and the psychology that sits behind human behavior at work. Expect open discussions, research, and real-world examples from thought-leaders and practitioners who are rethinking how work really works.
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

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