Okay, but what about managing up?
January 26, 2022
What’s to be done about the boss above me who doesn’t know this stuff but needs to? How do I get them to show up for me so I can show up for my own team?
Archives
Bad advice you shouldn’t take
January 12, 2022
Resignations. Competitive talent markets. The structure of the org chart. All of these things can feel bigger than you, as an individual leader trying to get things done in your organization. We get that. But be skeptical of any advice that takes them as fixed.
How to predict the future
December 29, 2021
Assumptions and predictions are two tools to get at the same thing. Both try to crystallize how you think about the world today, in case it changes. But writing down an assumption is passive, it’s descriptive. Making a prediction is active.
We didn’t build *that* Better boss
December 15, 2021
People send us the links in part because, haha, you build better bosses. Here’s the literal CEO of Better and seems like he could have used some management training. Hardy har har. But some of them also want to know, “Is this normal?” And if so, how often does this happen? And why?
Not quite out of office
December 1, 2021
We know that rest is transformative. We can point to periods of downtime in our lives as the places when we got to clarity. Where we had space. Space to breathe, and to take stock.
The cost of doing business
November 17, 2021
Every organization has costs, but there’s a lot of power in how they’re labelled. The labels people use bake in assumptions about whether those costs are internal or external. They tell you who we think should pay those costs.
Math you will actually use
November 3, 2021
None of the tools work until you let this one in. Here it is. You can’t fight math.
The masks are off and the masks are off
October 20, 2021
We’re in the midst of a massive renegotiation of the rules of work. And the central focus of that negotiation isn’t back to office plans, or international salary parity, or vaccine mandates. It’s power.
You can’t seize the moment with your hands full
October 6, 2021
Today, our second book comes out. It’s an ender chest. It is a full year of these newsletters, from the first lockdown to the anniversary of those lockdowns. It is a place to put down some of what the past 18 months have felt like.
That rattling sound is your Q4
September 22, 2021
There’s an adage in business that any decision is better than no decision. Because even if you’re wrong, you can always make a different decision further down the road.
Just say hybrid because nobody knows
September 8, 2021
Can we get to a place where we start to reimagine the thing? Whatever the thing is that you miss, you can reinvent it without starting from zero. Pay attention to the ache of the thing that’s missing. What was important about it?
Long on empathy and short on patience
August 25, 2021
We told leaders to be empathetic. We told them to be understanding. And they are doing that. They are phenomenal about understanding the conditions for underperformance in their teams. But it’s not working…They are patient to a fault.
Build Something Better
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