February 19, 2026

Episode 175: Designing High-Functioning Teams with Sam Spurlin

What does it really take to build teams that can adapt, move fast, and still stay human? In this episode of The Future of Teamwork, Dane Groeneveld chats with Sam Spurlin, an organization designer, future of work strategist, and transformation advisor who has spent the past decade helping executive teams rethink how work happens. The conversation explores distributed leadership, self-management, and how teams can operate with clarity instead of chaos.

Together, Dane and Sam dig into ideas like mission-based teams, team charters, and designing just enough structure to allow teams to move quickly without burning people out. They also explore how AI might support teaming in the future – from drafting team charters to surfacing blind spots in meetings – without replacing the human relationships that make teams work.

If you’re rethinking hierarchy, curious about self-managed teams, or wondering how to create the scaffolding that lets teams form, disband, and reform around real work, this episode offers thoughtful insights and plenty of practical takeaways.

🔗 Connect with Sam Spurlin on his website and LinkedIn

🔗 Listen to At Work With The Ready Podcast

Designing High-Functioning Teams with Sam Spurlin

Guest Bio

Deliberate Works is led by Sam Spurlin, an organization designer with over a decade of experience helping executive teams change how their organizations actually operate. He has led transformation work for global companies and coached senior leaders through complex structural and strategic challenges. That experience revealed a recurring pattern: even the best external interventions rarely stick, because the organization never develops the internal muscle to continue the work.

That insight is the foundation of Deliberate Works. Sam’s approach centers on transferring the capability to evolve—not just delivering recommendations, but building the sensing, designing, and iterating skills inside the organization itself. His background in positive psychology and systems thinking informs a practice oriented toward making organizations more adaptive, more humane, and less dependent on outside help to navigate complexity.

Key Takeaways

00:00 Introduction to the Future of Teamwork Podcast
00:23 Meet Sam Spurlin: Organizational Design Advisor & Co-Host of At Work with The Ready
01:05 From Teaching to Organizational Psychology & Self-Management
02:59 Distributed Leadership, Holacracy & Self-Managing Teams
06:31 Clarifying Roles: Ten Roles on a Three-Person Team
07:59 Retrospective Rhythm: Containing Chaos with Structure
10:04 Decision Rights, Trade-Offs & Optimizing for Outcomes
13:18 Purpose as Anchor: Avoiding Local Optimization
15:22 The Team Charter: Templates, Living Documents & Commitment
16:00 AI & Team Charters: Drafting, Accountability & Compliance Nudges
18:03 AI in Meetings: Guardrails, Big Brother Concerns & Maturity
19:24 The “Buzzkill” Role: Holding Teams to Their Agreements
21:02 Assigning AI a Perspective: Customer, Critic or Blind-Spot Finder
23:15 Simulating the Customer Voice in Real Time
25:31 Mission-Based Teams (MBTs): Focused Work with Clear Intent
26:29 The Scaffolding Required for Dynamic Teaming
27:52 Budget, Capacity & Built-In Slack
29:47 The Risk of Burning Out High Performers
30:46 ERGs, Trade-Offs & Systemic Tension
31:44 KPIs, OKRs & The Compensation Paradox
34:08 Developing Leaders Through MBTs
35:26 Rethinking Compensation: Individual vs. Team Value Creation
38:20 Humanizing Variable Compensation
40:30 The 60-Minute Team: Meetings as Micro-Teams
41:55 Good Meetings as Good Teaming in Miniature
43:29 Citizenship in Larger “Amorphous” Teams
44:55 Slack (Time & Tool): Reflection as a Leadership Discipline
45:54 Maintenance Over Heroics: Why Retros Matter
47:15 AI as Teammate, Prompt & Perspective Amplifier
48:11 Where to Find Sam & Closing Thoughts