At Work with The Ready 44. Forget ROI: The Ethical Case for Org Design
26 snips
Feb 23, 2026 They challenge ROI as the sole yardstick and argue org design should be judged on moral grounds. They explore power imbalances, transparency, compensation gaps, and how bureaucracy harms people. They propose principles like contestable power, fair reward spreads, and auditing values. They offer practical moves to resist performative change and make work more humane.
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Bureaucracy Causes Moral Injury By Hiding Impact
- Repetitive bureaucratic friction harms people because effort disappears into black boxes with no visible impact.
- Sam describes moral injury from systems where simple tasks require absurd hoops, eroding meaning and psychological safety.
Privilege Encourages Blindness To Organizational Harm
- Wealth and positional trappings make it psychologically easier for leaders to ignore systemic harm and double down on growth.
- Rodney theorizes senior executives must self‑justify their privilege to avoid cognitive dissonance, further entrenching extractive choices.
Public Markets Make Ethical Design Harder
- Public ownership and shareholder pressure concentrate resources upward, making ethical org design harder to sustain.
- Rodney notes private, family‑held companies more often afford long‑term people investments because they avoid quarterly growth compulsion.
