Geoffrey West didn’t set out to explain work. He was a physicist trying to understand why living things grow, age, and die. But when his questions expanded into biology, cities, and organizations, they offered a way to think about why growth changes how organizations behave and why success often brings new constraints. In this episode, Dart and Geoffrey discuss why work feels different as organizations scale, why cities keep renewing themselves while companies tend to burn out, and what these hidden constraints mean for the people doing the work.

Geoffrey West is a British theoretical physicist and Distinguished Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a former president of the Institute and the author of Scale, which explores how size shapes growth, innovation, and lifespan across living and social systems.

In this episode, Dart and Geoffrey discuss:
- Why work changes as organizations grow
- How simple scaling laws shape complex systems
- Why larger animals live longer
- Why companies die younger than cities
- How scale speeds up innovation
- Why bureaucracy grows with success
- How innovation gets crowded out over time
- Why cities tolerate difference better than firms
- What keeps work alive inside organizations
- And other topics…

Geoffrey West is a British theoretical physicist and Distinguished Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he previously served as president. Earlier in his career, he led the high-energy physics group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and held faculty positions at Stanford University. His research focuses on universal scaling laws in biology, cities, and social systems, examining how size shapes growth, innovation, and lifespan. He is the author of Scale.

Resources Mentioned:
Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, by Geoffrey West: https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/014311090X

Connect with Geoffrey:
Official website: https://www.geoffreywest.com/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

After decades in education, Dr. Peter Liljedahl realized that many classrooms fail to engage the people inside them. Rather than accept that reality, he began challenging every classroom norm he could find, asking a single question of each one: does this increase thinking?

What followed was a decades-long effort to redesign learning environments from the ground up, dramatically increasing student engagement and understanding. In this revisited episode, Dart and Peter discuss how rethinking classroom norms can reshape learning, collaboration, and the design of work itself.

Dr. Peter Liljedahl is an author, researcher, and professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His work focuses on increasing thinking, engagement, and collaboration through classroom design.

In this episode, Dart and Peter discuss:
- Peter’s redesign of the classroom and how it can be applied to work
- How to create an environment that cultivates thinking
- Transforming norms to achieve better results
- The importance of collaboration in work and learning
- The best ways to evaluate employee performance
- Deconstructing ideas into actionable points
- What creates “Aha!” moments
- The structure of a good task
- And other topics…

Dr. Peter Liljedahl is a professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His work focuses on increasing thinking, engagement, and collaboration through classroom design. He is the author of Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics and works internationally with educators, schools, and education systems. His work has been recognized with the Cmolik Prize for the Enhancement of Public Education and the Fields Institute’s Margaret Sinclair Memorial Award for Innovation and Excellence in Mathematics Education.

Resources mentioned:
Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12, by Peter Liljedahl: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Thinking-Classrooms-Mathematics-Grades/dp/1544374836
Weapons of the Weak, by James Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Weak-Everyday-Peasant-Resistance/dp/0300036418
A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander: https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199

Connect with Peter:
X: https://x.com/pgliljedahl
https://buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Ethical questions at work rarely show up as rules or compliance issues. They show up in the systems organizations design and the outcomes those systems produce. And even well-intentioned leaders can create harm without meaning to. In this episode, Dart and Ed explore legitimacy, responsibility, employees, power, and why acting ethically inside complex systems is so difficult, even when people know what the right thing is.

Ed Freeman is best known for stakeholder theory, which challenged the idea that companies exist only to serve shareholders. He argues instead that businesses are built on relationships, and that ethics and strategy can’t be separated.

In this episode, Dart and Ed discuss:
- Why stakeholder theory was never “shareholders versus everyone else”
- What legitimacy means and why companies lose it
- How ethics and strategy got separated
- Why values come before business models
- Managing stakeholders vs. building relationships
- Why interdependence matters more than primacy
- When trade-offs signal a lack of imagination
- How ignoring people can lead to harm
- Why ethics can’t be outsourced to regulation
- What it means to act ethically inside complex systems
- And other topics…

R. Edward Freeman is Stephen E. Bachand University Professor of Business Administration and Olsson Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He previously taught at the Wharton School and the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on stakeholder theory, business ethics, and the role of purpose in strategy. He is the author of the award-winning Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach and numerous articles on ethics, value creation, and capitalism.

Resources Mentioned:
Ed’s Book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach: https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-R-Edward-Freeman/dp/0521151740
Ed’s Podcast, The Stakeholder Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-stakeholder-podcast/id1526139352

Connect with Ed:
Darden faculty page: https://www.darden.virginia.edu/faculty-research/directory/r-edward-freeman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/r-edward-freeman-98b8897/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.