Aaron Dignan is founder of The Ready, former CEO of Undercurrent and author of “Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?” Aaron advises management teams at GE, American Express, PepsiCo, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum – just to name a few. What got Aaron heading down the path of innovation? From an early age he was interested in human potential. He always wanted to know: What am I capable of? Aaron started a few companies and quickly learned what an unsustainable operating system looked like. After 8 years running his company he realized there was too much work fully dependent on him and knew something needed to change if his company was ever going to grow. Aaron took a step back and searched out what would happen if he let go of the reigns a little. He looked at various systems in nature that didn’t have traditional leaders, as well as companies that had done great things operating in non-traditional ways. His company now has the mission statement of “Change how the world works.” Aaron approaches bureaucracy in business by way of his idea of the “OS Canvas.” OS Canvas is a framework and tool that reflects and evolves an organization’s operating system through 12 critical fields: Purpose, authority, structure, strategy, resources, innovation, workflow, meetings, information, membership, mastery, and compensation. Each field can be used to clarify and provoke principles and practices upon which everything runs. With his operating system he helps companies and individuals answer the question: What is stopping you from doing the best work of your life? In this episode of Trend Following Radio: Innovation Bureaucracy Bottlenecks in decision making Quarterly statements Operating system canvas