University of Michigan’s PPE speaker for Fall 2026 is Dart Lindsley.
October 29, 2026
4-6 p.m
Speaker Bio
Dart is the CEO of the work design company 11fold and host of the podcast "Work for Humans." He spent 25 years in transformation roles at Fortune 100 high-tech companies, serving as a Strategic Advisor and Head of Global Process Excellence for People Operations at Google, and previously as a Head of Business Architecture at Cisco Systems. He speaks on why we need to radically transform where we position employees in our business models — from inputs to customers. His 2024 HBR article "Reimagining Work as a Product" was nominated as best-of-issue and has gone on to multiple reprints. Work for Humans has 200 episodes on which Dart speaks with diverse thinkers about how we might design better work. The show ranks in the top 3% almong all podcasts and routinely peaks in the top 50 in the management category. Dart earned a 2024 Mira Fellowship for thinkers with radical reframes that can improve the world.
About the Talk
Early management theorists committed a category error when they classified employees as inputs to production: assets, resources, human capital. Dart argues that error haunts work today and offers a reframe. Employees are customers. Work is a product they choose to buy with their labor. Like any subscription product, it has to be designed well enough that working customers choose to buy it each day. Building on his HBR article "Reimagining Work as a Product" (with co-author Eric Anicich), Dart shows how this reframe overturns norms, power structures, and how resources are allocated. For researchers it changes the questions, the units of analysis, the standards of evidence. He shares examples from organizations already living in the new world. He'll then use the reframe as a case study in something larger: what it takes to lead a paradigm shift, and the tools that serve anyone striving to redesign institutions to solve the problems of living and working together.
The talk will begin at 4pm, with time for questions and answers, as well as light refreshments to follow.
Selected Relevant Episodes of the Podcast, "Work for Humans"
Alvin Roth, Stanford, on matching markets and Moral Economics
Peter Fader, Wharton, on applying the principles of customer centricity to work
Bart Houlahan, founder of B-lab, on the origin of B-Corporations
Joseph Blasi, Rutgers, on the US history of employee ownership
Elizabeth Anderson, U Mich, on the history of the Work Ethic
Seth Godin, on the "Song of Significance"
For more episodes, please click this Podcast Topic Directory link.
