Photo by Felix Mittermeier.
Brené says that trust requires vulnerability so here goes: we’re planning something big and we’re scared and we need your help.
In the last two years we’ve worked with thousands of leaders. We’ve talked about everything from how to hire to how to fire. We’ve had people cry and we’ve had people teach each other to waltz and just about everything in between. We’ve done some hard work.
But there’s one thing we’ve never done and we think it’s time to try. We’ve never let the world buy a ticket to our work with bosses.
See, our programs usually run one company at a time. There’s a lot of things that make sense about that approach. We can tailor it to the company. We can get the whole management team together in a room. We know how to sell those programs, we know how to deliver those programs. If there’s a way to say it without sounding pompous, we genuinely believe that it is the best program of its kind. Periodt.
But when you do whole companies at a time, you leave people out. You leave out people between gigs. You leave out people from tiny companies who can’t get a full cohort together. And, weirdly, you leave out people from gigantic companies who can’t navigate the process for getting us Approved Vendor status.
We don’t like leaving people out. But building a ticketed event is scary. What if people don’t buy tickets? How do we even find people one at a time?
We fretted to a friend recently. She looked at us and said Nightingales Don’t Fail. We laughed. We fail plenty. Not all of our experiments pan out. But we don’t want this one to fail. We want it to be something amazing.
So here’s the deal: we’re running a 3-day program in September for bosses. We’re using a new format and new material. We’re building on everything we’ve learned to make something really special. If you ever felt like we had something important to say to you about leadership, this is your ticket. If you ever forwarded our stuff to a friend, this is their ticket.
Raw Signal Group presents: Betterboss
Annnnnnnd after you get your tickets, if you help us get the word out, @rawsignalgroup will retweet you. Maybe twice.
— Melissa & Johnathan
What Melissa’s reading
So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend
It was hard to miss the title of Sue Bird’s piece in The Player Tribune about Megan Rapinoe. So it’s possible you’ve already seen the link. Maybe you saw the twitter moment and tucked it in an open tab somewhere for later. Or maybe you were walking through an airport and saw it on a CNN ticker. Or maybe you haven’t seen it at all. In which case, you’re welcome. I’m glad I could be the one to put it in front of you.
While it looks like a piece about sports…ok, ok it IS a piece about sports, but ALSO…this is about leadership in 2019. This is about the refusal to accept the idea that we live in a time where anything can be apolitical. And not rewriting our collective history to pretend sports ever was.
Earlier this week, I honestly thought I would be writing about the Wayfair walkout. About how their CEO missed the mark. How leadership isn’t just cashing the big paycheck or showing up for media appearances. It’s having a vision and making hard calls. And I suspect their CEO feels like holding the capitalist line even while America locks children in overcrowded, dirty cages is…I don’t know. I can’t find a way to finish that sentence. The Wayfair leadership team is on the wrong side of history. Full stop.
Bird’s piece is a must read for all of us, particularly for those of us who lead people and teams in 2019. She manages to weave many complex themes together. And the whole thing is written from this place of glowing, flirty, heart-full love she feels about Her Person.
If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, here’s the part I need my boss people to see right now:
Megan is at the boss level in the video game of knowing herself. She’s always been confident….. but that doesn’t mean she’s always been immune. She’s as sensitive as anyone — maybe more!! She’s just figured out how to harness that sensitivity.
And I think Megan’s sensitivity is what drives her to fight for others. I think it’s what drove her to take a knee. The Megan you’re seeing now? It’s the stronger version of the one who knelt in the first place. All the threats, all the criticism, all the fallout — coming out on the other side of that is what makes her seem so unfazed by the assholes of the world now.
I think in trying to help others, Megan has cemented who she is.
What Johnathan’s listening to and reading
Connecting three dots about that are already pretty close together:
- Anand talking about billionaires, on the Recode/Decode podcast
- Mike on how Superhuman is Spying on You
- The B-Corp assessment process
Dot one: Anand can’t help it, he speaks in soundbites. It can be frustrating at times, but they are tasty soundbites. In this interview with Kara he starts by talking about bait-and-switch philanthropy. About how it can be a way to buy yourself out of accountability for the harms you created while making your money.
He has this line where he says “I don’t want to talk about what new thing you can do to make the world better. I want to talk about what you can stop doing that’s harming the world.” That stuck with me.
He also talks about how, if the super-rich really want to change the world for the better, they need to be “traitors to their class.” About how the kind of giving that can make lasting change is the kind that, for instance, supports structural efforts to close tax loopholes.
Dot two: So then Mike comes along and makes twitter very upset with his post about Superhuman, the email client du jour. I find product privacy articles riveting, and this is a pretty thoughtful takedown of a valley darling. But today I’m actually focused on an almost throwaway line. Halfway down, Mike writes,
“If Superhuman is truly willing to commit to never license any data to anyone for any reason, they should be able to clearly say so right now. But they probably won’t, because they want to keep their options open.”
Dot three: We’re looking at the B-corp certification process and what it would take for us to get certified. And a cool thing is that one of their requirements is a motion by the board to amend the articles of incorporation. You need to make it part of the company’s DNA to consider the interests of other stakeholders and society at large. Not just shareholders.
3 dots. One theme.
Long-time readers know we pay a lot of attention to the conversation around corporate ethics. It’s moving fast. And this week it feels like everything I read is talking about how to put structural supports in place to lock in your ethics. And I think there’s good stuff there if you go digging.
The stories of early 2019 were all about employees making the call when their employers wouldn’t. Walking out. Quitting. Refusing to be a part of it. There are stories waiting to be written in late 2019 about the companies who get out ahead. Who make a structural change to give up their optionality and make it clear where they stand. I wonder if your company will be one of them.
